Nebraska attorney general files brief to stop Biden-Harris administration’s electric-truck mandate

Last month, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers led a coalition of states in filing a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Hilgers’ suit is aimed at stopping the Biden-Harris administration from imposing an electric-vehicle mandate on truck manufacturers.

Hilgers is leading a coalition of 24 states in Nebraska v. EPA to challenge the new rule.

“The EPA’s attempt to transform the trucking industry and supply-chain infrastructure goes well beyond the agency’s authority,” Hilgers said. “Once again, the Biden-Harris administration’s radical climate agenda will harm Americans. A national electric-truck mandate will raise prices for groceries, strain the electrical grid and disrupt the transportation, logistics, biofuel and farming industries that drive the Nebraska economy. Our brief makes the common-sense and rule-of-law argument that whether to require manufacturers to sell electric trucks is a highly consequential decision. That decision should be left for Congress and the states—not for unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington.”

In April, EPA published a rule imposing stringent tailpipe-emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles that effectively force manufacturers to produce more electric trucks and fewer internal-combustion trucks.

The attorneys general argued that EPA’s electric-truck mandate raises a “major question” that Congress has not clearly authorized EPA to decide.

The brief points out that just 0.10 percent of all heavy-duty trucks sold today are powered by a battery, but that EPA’s rule would increase that number to 45 percent in less than a decade away.

That massive shift in the nation’s trucking and logistics industries will slow down the transportation of essential goods, stress the electric grid and raise prices for Americans.

The brief also argues that EPA has never before forced manufacturers to produce heavy-duty electric vehicles and that allowing the electric-truck mandate to stand would short circuit the ongoing policy debate that should be left to Congress and the states. 

Joining Hilgers in filing the brief against the Biden-Harris administration are the attorneys general from the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The brief filing follows the coalition asking EPA in September to maintain a federal legal block on California’s Advanced Clean Fleets regulation.