Two federal judges in Texas and Kentucky ruled against the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) greenhouse gas emissions rule, which would require states to set goals to reduce vehicle emissions. Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled on March 27, 2024, that the FHWA did not have the authority to issue the rule, and Judge Benjamin Beaton of the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky ruled on April 1, 2024, that the agency could not enforce the rule in the state.
The FHWA on December 7, 2023, issued a final rule requiring state transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to establish carbon dioxide measurement targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions over time.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on December 19 sued the U.S. Department of Transportation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas seeking to block the rule, arguing that the FHWA did not have the authority to enact the rule. A separate lawsuit was filed in December in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky by 21 states.
Hendrix argued in his court opinion that the FHWA did not have the authority to issue the rule, arguing that, “An agency can only do what the people authorize it to do, and the plain language of Section 150(c)(3) and its related statutory provisions demonstrate the DOT was not authorized to enact the 2023 Rule.” Beaton issued a similar statement in his court opinion, arguing that the rule was invalid and was “a statutorily unsupported and substantively capricious exercise of the Administrator’s rulemaking authority.”
The court decisions blocked enforcement of the rule in the 22 states that joined the lawsuits. The Department of Transportation had not responded to the decisions as of April 10, 2024.
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