A House-passed effort to block California’s electric vehicle mandate has moved to the U.S. Senate — where lawmakers will have to decide not only whether they should nix the waiver for the state’s plan to phase out the sale of gas-only vehicles in the next 10 years but also whether they can.
“For over 50 years, California has had the legal authority to set its own vehicle emissions standards because Congress recognized our state’s unique air quality challenges and history of environmental leadership when it updated the Clean Air Act with overwhelming bipartisan support,” said Sen. Alex Padilla of California.
Will that remain the case? He’s not holding his breath.
Related: Why Rep. Lou Correa sided with Republicans in vote to override California’s electric car mandate
While Congress gave California the ability to set stricter air quality and vehicle emissions standards — allowing the state to serve as a catalyst for other states’ stronger environmental laws — those rules still need approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
During the Biden administration, California was granted such permission from the EPA to issue its groundbreaking mandate to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.
That green light came just a month before President Donald Trump took office again.
Sign up for Down Ballot, our Southern California politics email newsletter. Subscribe here.House Republicans, along with a few dozen Democrats, recently voted to override the EPA’s waiver. To do that, they’re using the Congressional Review Act, a law that gives Congress strengthened oversight of federal agencies’ rules.
Whether they can do that is the question.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan office that provides Congress with information, in March said the Congressional Review Act does not cover the waivers, so lawmakers could not use that to revoke them.
The Senate parliamentarian, who advises senators on rules interpretations, has reportedly agreed that the Congressional Review Act is not applicable in this situation.
And it has Padilla, and other Democratic senators, including California’s Adam Schiff, worried about precedent.
“If Republicans can ignore the parliamentarian on a (Congressional Review Act), then why not the tax bill that they’re working so hard on? Or health care? Or anything else,” Padilla said.
“Once you overrule the parliamentarian on a legislative matter, all bets are off,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “Any future majority would have precedent to overrule the parliamentarian on legislative matters. … It is tantamount to eliminating the filibuster.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, indicated that he opposed efforts to overrule the parliamentarian regarding budget reconciliation issues earlier this year. He recently told Politico that Republicans are still considering the resolution and whether to bring it up.
A spokesperson for Thune did not respond to a request for comment.
Schiff, California’s newest U.S. senator who often is at odds with Republicans, said the GOP could “be going against their own promises to follow the Senate’s rules, the Government Accountability Office and nearly 60 years of bipartisan U.S. environmental policy” should they override the parliamentarian.
“It would amount to going nuclear, and there will be no going back,” said Schiff.
But Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican who leads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sees Republicans’ efforts a little differently.
“I don’t characterize it as overturning the parliamentarian,” Capito recently told Axios.
“This is a different, very exceptional type of situation, and we’ll be talking about it a lot,” she said.
Padilla, in a recent speech on the Senate floor, said the issue ultimately comes down to politics.
“While the particular procedural battle that we find ourselves in today over the Clean Air Act waivers may be new, the larger war on California’s climate leadership and progress is not new,” Padilla said.
He later told the Southern California News Group, “If Republicans choose to throw out the Senate rulebook, I’m prepared to do everything in my power to defend California’s right to tackle the worsening air pollution we face.”
Orange County Rep. Lou Correa was one of the Democrats who sided with Republicans in voting to override the waiver. He said his vote resulted from listening to constituents who want to protect the environment but have said an electric vehicle mandate does not make sense for them or their finances.
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