West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is co-leading with Kentucky a coalition of 26 states in challenging the Biden administration’s latest attempt to drive gas-powered vehicles off the road.
The coalition has filed the challenge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to block the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s strict fuel efficiency standards— the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
The new rule requires car manufacturers to dramatically increase the average fuel economy of passenger cars and light trucks in less than a decade. It imposes unworkable standards that leverage the weight of the federal government to require auto manufacturers to produce more electric vehicles. The forced transition to EVs would bypass the free market while increasing costs on families and undermining the reliability of the electric grid.
“Congress did not give the NHTSA such power to reshape an industry in a way that would ultimately hurt the pocketbooks of consumers— this rule is legally flawed and unrealistic,” Attorney General Morrisey said. “This will undoubtedly cause the United States to be dependent on other nations like China for our energy needs and will undermine American energy security by increasing demand and strain power grids. And NHTSA is taking this action even though Congress instructed that it was not to consider electric vehicles when setting fuel standards.”
“The Biden administration’s mission seems to be to cripple the economy, increase inflation and prolong the suffering of millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet—all while ignoring the boundaries of the law.”
Attorney General Morrisey led a coalition of 26 states in a letter opposing the CAFE standards proposal when it was unveiled last year.
The rule places more strain and demand on the nation’s energy grids—the grids won’t have the baseload capacity to take on even more demand from electric vehicles, particularly in the off-hours that people charge these cars.
Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming joined the West Virginia- and Kentucky led challenge.
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