The U.S. Supreme Court just handed a major defeat to California’s climate radicals, and even one liberal justice joined the conservative wing to make it happen.
In a 7-2 ruling on Friday, the court cleared the way for the state’s energy producers to move forward with their lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, targeting California’s extreme green energy mandates. At the heart of the case is the state’s requirement that electric vehicles dominate the market by 2035, part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to force California into “carbon neutrality.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, made it clear these mandates are not just heavy-handed but potentially illegal.
The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” Kavanaugh wrote. “In light of this Court’s precedents and the evidence before the Court of Appeals, the fuel producers established Article III standing to challenge EPA’s approval of the California regulations.”®
