California’s regulations would have raised costs for consumers and threatened critical supply chains if they weren’t repealed, lawmakers said.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on May 1 to block California’s plan to phase out the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, although California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the vote was illegal.
The Republican-controlled House voted to repeal waivers granted by the Biden administration that allowed California to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 and mandate the sale of zero-emission trucks.
“The passage of these resolutions is a victory for Americans who will not be forced into purchasing costly EVs because of California’s unworkable mandates,” Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said in a statement announcing the vote.
“If not repealed, the California waivers would lead to higher prices for both new and used vehicles, increase our reliance on China, and strain our electric grid.”
Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), who cosponsored the resolution, stated that California’s regulations would “raise costs for consumers, crush small businesses, and threaten critical supply chains across the country.”
Newsom denounced the vote as illegal, given that the resolutions to repeal the waivers were passed under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), according to a statement by his office.
“This defies decades of precedent of these waivers not being subject to the CRA, and contradicts the non-partisan Government Accountability Office and Senate Parliamentarian, who both ruled that the CRA’s short-circuited process does not apply to the waivers,” the statement reads.
Newsom said the state’s vehicle program is necessary to ensure clean air and maintain competitiveness with China, adding that he would continue defending the program despite the vote.
“Clean air didn’t used to be political,” the governor said. “Washington may want to cede our economy to China but California is standing by American innovation.”
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation—which represents General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, and other major automakers—had warned that car companies could be “forced to substantially reduce the number of overall vehicles for sale to inflate their proportion of electric vehicles sales.”
