EPA Proposes Two-Year Delay of Biden-Era Vehicle Emissions Standards
On May 14, 2026, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is reconsidering the criteria pollutant standards for new light- and medium-duty vehicles. The first phase of EPA’s proposal would push back the phase-in schedule of the “Tier 4” criteria pollutant standards from model year 2027 to model year 2029, giving automakers two additional model years to comply with the existing Tier 3 framework before the more stringent requirements begin to apply—and giving EPA time to conduct a second rulemaking to amend the Tier 4 emissions standards.
U.S. Federal Courts Vacate Federal Highway Administration Greenhouse Gas Rule
On Tuesday, April 2, 2024, in Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Federal Highway Administration¸ No. 23-162 (W.D. Ky.), the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky vacated the Federal Highway Administration December 2023 Greenhouse Gas Rule (see our prior blog post here for a more detailed summary of the Rule). That rule, proposed in July 2022 and modeled off of a rule proposed by the Obama administration in 2017 but repealed by the Trump administration before it could take effect, sought to require each state to set declining targets for tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles on the National Highway System. Tuesday’s ruling follows a similar one from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on March 28, 2024, in State of Texas v. U.S. Dep’t of Trans. No. 23-304 (N.D. Tex.) that purported to vacate the rule nationwide.
