Congress has unlocked a new playbook for deregulation.
Lawmakers advanced and President Donald Trump signed into law three resolutions under the Congressional Review Act to overturn environmental waivers granted to California by the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency.
These waivers allowed California to enforce an aggressive electric vehicle mandate – one that would have shaped markets and consumer choice far beyond the state’s borders.
The waivers approved three major California programs: Advanced Clean Cars II, Advanced Clean Trucks, and a strict nitrogen oxide emissions rule.
The Advanced Clean Cars II program required that all new passenger vehicles sold in California be zero-emission by 2035. The Advanced Clean Trucks program mandated that between 40% and 75% of new heavy-duty trucks sold in the state meet zero-emission standards within that same timeframe. California’s nitrogen oxide rule instituted emissions thresholds that went far beyond federal emission standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines.
These mandates expanded far beyond California and amounted to a nationwide electric vehicle mandate.
Under the Clean Air Act, other states can adopt California’s program standards and implement them in their states. Twelve states and D.C. have already tied their regulations to the California standards.
In practice, automakers and manufacturers can’t afford to build one product line for California and another for the rest of the country. So, when California and other states implement new requirements for vehicles, it effectively sets policy for the whole nation just as a federal rule would.
The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn federal regulations and rules with a simple majority in both chambers and the president’s signature.
These California “waivers” are rules hidden under the guise of waivers.
The Government Accountability Office issued an unusual opinion at the request of Senate Democrats that these waivers were ineligible for Congressional Review Act because they applied only to California, making them actions of “particular applicability” rather than the “broad applicability” rules the Congressional Review Act typically requires.
The Senate correctly rejected that reading. Senators understood that while the waivers were granted to one state, the effect was national. California’s outsized market share and influence meant that the entire country would be pulled into compliance under what amounted to a federal rule.
Using the Congressional Review Act to remove state-level waivers sets a powerful precedent.
Congress demonstrated that it can use the Congressional Review Act to challenge not only traditional federal rules, but also to overturn rules disguised as agency decisions, such as waivers, guidance, and permitting actions. These agency decisions, often made without direct accountability, increasingly serve as the tool of choice for regulators to rewrite national policy and implement burdensome rules and regulations.
Now, there’s a clear path to challenge them.
This should be welcome news for anyone concerned about the unchecked growth of the administrative state. It shows that Congress is willing to reassert its constitutional role and step in both on traditional rules and when agencies hide rules within administrative actions.
The Congressional Review Act proceedings around these waivers offers a roadmap for a future deregulatory agenda that can reverse Biden-era agency actions across a variety of other policy areas.
The EPA may have checked bureaucratic boxes in granting California’s waivers, but the decision failed the test of democratic accountability. Congress was right to step in – and now that it has, it should keep going.
The tools for rolling back regulatory overreach are in front of us. What’s needed next is the will to use them.
