CEI Files Opening Brief in Case Seeking More Lenient CAFE standards

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) filed its opening brief in CEI v. NHTSA, contending the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed to consider more lenient Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards than the ones they chose, despite clear indications that such standards would save more lives.

The CEI opening brief also asks the Court to review:

• Whether agencies arbitrarily overstated the health impacts of vehicle particulate emissions, given evidence many of the underlying studies on this issue were seriously flawed.
• Whether two studies by EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee should be added to the rulemaking record.

CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman said:

“The Administration touted its new, more lenient fuel-economy standards as saving lives, and they do. But as our brief shows, thousands of more lives would have been saved if the agencies had gone even further in the direction of deregulation. The court should order the agencies to seriously study that issue rather than duck it.”

CEI attorney Devin Watkins said:

“In this rulemaking, EPA claimed PM 2.5 causes harms even below the NAAQS standards while at the same time it determined such standards are all that are needed to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety. EPA cannot claim that such levels protect public health and don’t protect public health at the same time.”

Read the full opening brief here.

For more information on CEI v. NHTSA: https://cei.org/court_case/cei-v-nhtsa/

Read more:CEI Files New Challenge to the Administration’s Fuel Economy Standards