In April, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency will revisit Obama-era rules that raised efficiency requirements for vehicles. These rules would require automobiles to get nearly 50-miles-per-gallon by 2025.
Pruitt's agency says the standards are “based on outdated information” and “the current standards may be too stringent.”
That's enough for 18 states to sue the Trump Administration.
...in the lawsuit, the states contend that the EPA acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in changing course on the greenhouse gas regulations.
The words "arbitrarily and capriciously" are important here. I'm not a legal expert, but I wonder how a court can find that one administration (namely, the Obama Administration) could issue executive orders and rules, while the next Administration (Trump) can't undo those executive orders or change the rules.
If courts ruled ONLY on the power of the executive branch, the Trump Administration would win every time. But liberal courts are demanding that the Trump Administration justify specific actions before the court.
In other words, liberal jurists are deciding on policy. If you share my conservative view of the court's duties, that's not within their power.
But liberals woke up in November 2016 to find that they had very little power amongst the legislative and executive branch of this country and now fight their policy battles in liberal courts.
Congress needs to continue to send many conservative Trump nominees to the courtrooms of this country as fast as possible.
By the way, the practical impact of these standards is that they price many cars out of our reach.