Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association, Inc. v. EPA

In a challenge to 2016 greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines and vehicles brought by the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that neither the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) nor the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had authority to adopt standards that apply to trailers. With respect to the greenhouse gas emissions standards, the court concluded that trailers are not “motor vehicles” under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act because trailers are not “self-propelled.” EPA therefore could not rely on Section 202(a)(1) to set emission standards for trailers and require trailer manufacturers to comply with the standards. With respect to the fuel efficiency standards, the court rejected NHTSA’s argument that the term “vehicles” in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 provision authorizing NHTSA to set fuel economy standards for “commercial medium- and heavy-duty on-highway vehicles” could reasonably be interpreted to include trailers. The majority determined that “[b]ecause a trailer uses no fuel, it doesn’t have fuel economy” and that in the statutory context, “nothing is a vehicle unless it has fuel economy.” Judge Millett dissented from the majority’s conclusion that NHTSA lacked authority to issue fuel economy regulations that apply to commercial trailers. She wrote that NHTSA “acted well within its delegated regulatory authority in establishing fuel efficiency requirements for the trailer portion of tractor-trailers that regularly travel the Nation’s highways.”

On September 29, 2020, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the compliance dates for fuel economy regulations adopted by the Obama administration to the extent the regulations apply to truck trailers. The court heard oral argument on September 15 in a case challenging not only the fuel economy regulations, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) promulgated, but also greenhouse gas emissions standards promulgated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the same rulemaking. In October 2017, the D.C. Circuit stayed the EPA standards, which would have taken effect in January 2018. The NHTSA regulations would have taken effect in January 2021. In its stay motion, the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA) argued that the court had already determined that its challenge to the EPA standards was likely to be successful and that the NHTSA standards could not function without the EPA standards. TTMA also argued that NHTSA lacked authority to regulate fuel economy of trailers. In addition, TTMA asserted that its members would suffer immediate and irreparable harm in the absence of a stay. Both EPA and NHTSA are still in the process of reconsidering their trailer rules.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a motion by the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA) to lift the abeyance in TTMA’s case challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) 2016 rule establishing greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines and vehicles. The schedule set by the D.C. Circuit requires final briefs to be filed by June 2, 2020. The court severed TTMA’s case from another case brought by the Racing Enthusiasts and Suppliers Coalition (RESC) challenging different aspects of the same rule. RESC’s case will continue to be held in abeyance. Both proceedings had been held in abeyance since 2017 while the agencies consider administrative requests for reconsideration. In October 2017, the D.C. Circuit granted TTMA’s motion to stay the EPA portion of the rule, which was scheduled to take effect in 2018. In its motion to lift the abeyance, TTMA said it could “no longer afford to wait” for judicial review because the NHTSA portion of the rule would take effect in January 2021 and any delay in resolution of the proceedings beyond mid-2020 “will begin to cause significant prejudice to TTMA’s members.”

The Agencies called the relief sought “not only unusual, but improper” and characterized the motion as “a bid to obtain the Agencies’ internal timelines and deliberations with the goal of rearranging their regulatory priorities to suit Petitioner’s own interests.”

A trade group challenging greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines and vehicles filed a motion in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals asking the court to compel EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (the Agencies) to submit a status report on its reconsideration of the standards, including a timeline for completion. The trade group said that if the Agencies could not commit to issuing a new proposed rule or announcing intent to retain the current rule within 90 days, the trade group would consider moving to lift the abeyance currently in place.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a motion by a truck trailer manufacturers trade group to stay the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) portion of a final rule adopted by EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in August 2016 establishing greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines and vehicles. The court said the trade group had satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending judicial review and stayed the rule “insofar as it purports to regulate trailers.” The court also granted the respondents’ motion to continue holding the case in abeyance pending the completion of administrative proceedings that the agencies said “could obviate the need for judicial resolution” of the issues raised by the trade group. The court directed the parties to file status reports every 90 days.

On September 25, 2017, the Truck Trailers Manufacturers Association (TTMA) asked the D.C. Circuit to stay EPA's greenhouse gas and fuel efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines and vehicles, which TTMA said impermissibly imposed standards on heavy-duty trailers. TTMA noted that the trailer standards—which TTMA argued EPA lacked statutory authority to impose—would take effect on January 1, 2018. TTMA said it was now clear that the D.C. Circuit would not complete its review by that time and that EPA, which agreed in August 2017 to reconsider the trailer standards, had not acted on TTMA’s April 2017 request for an administrative stay. In moving for the stay, TTMA said it was likely to succeed on the merits, that its members would be irreparably harmed in the absence of a stay, and that a stay would not harm any parties and would be in the public interest.

On September 18, 2017, EPA requested that the D.C. Circuit continue to hold the case in abeyance pending completion of administrative proceedings. TTMA said it opposed that request unless the court granted its request for the stay.

The D.C. Circuit granted EPA’s motion to hold the cases challenging its greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards for new large and heavy-duty vehicles in abeyance while EPA considered a request for reconsideration of the standards from one of the petitioners. The court ordered that the cases be held in abeyance pending further order of the court and directed the parties to file motions to govern further proceedings by July 20, 2017. The court said it would not address a request to defer deadlines in the standards because the stay factors had not been addressed in the request.

On April 20, 2017, EPA asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause challenges to greenhouse gas and fuel efficiency standards for new large and heavy-duty vehicles to allow the agency to review a request for reconsideration submitted by the petitioner in one of the proceedings challenging the standards. That petitioner—the Truck Trailers Manufacturers Association, Inc. (TTMA)—partially opposed the pause in the litigation because EPA did not propose to stay or extend the standards’ effective dates. TTMA argued that the 90-day abeyance sought by EPA would unfairly prejudice it and its members because they faced “imminent compliance obligations.” TTMA indicated it was willing to support a 30-day delay in setting a briefing schedule.

In January 2017, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and Union of Concerned Scientists moved to intervene on EPA’s behalf, arguing that they had a “demonstrable interest” in defending the standards on behalf of their members, to whom the standards’ health, environmental, and economic benefits would accrue. The California Air Resources Board, State of Connecticut, State of Iowa, State of Massachusetts, State of Oregon, State of Rhode Island, State of Vermont, and State of Washington also sought to intervene.

In December 2016, Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association, Inc. (TTMA) and the Racing Enthusiasts and Suppliers Coalition filed petitions for review in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals challenging EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines and vehicles. The TTMA said that it sought review on the grounds that the regulations exceeded respondents’ authority, were contrary to the Clean Air Act and Energy Independence and Security Act, and were arbitrary, capricious, and otherwise contrary to law. The TTMA asked the court to set aside the provisions of the standards that were applicable to trailers.