A new day. A new challenge by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond to yet another controversial rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This one is a challenge to the Biden administration’s use of the EPA to force American motorists to buy electric vehicles by enforcing new environmental regulations against gas powered cars.
Led by Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a coalition of nearly two dozen states, including Oklahoma, filed a challenge against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, asking the court to declare the new rules unlawful. According to the filing, the EPA regulations impose “unworkable emissions standards” on passenger cars and medium-duty vehicles.
“Conservative attorneys general are slamming the brakes on President Biden’s radical green agenda that is using the weight of the federal government to force expensive EVs on families, workers and farmers,” Coleman said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
In announcing the action, Kentucky AG Coleman accused the EPA of attempting to use the weight of the federal government and force manufacturers to produce more EVs so they account for nearly 70% of car sales in less than a decade. Last year’s EV sales in the US were 8.4% while in Kentucky, they amounted to less than 1%. Coleman charged the forced transition to EVs would “devastate the American economy,” threaten jobs and raise prices and undermine the reliability of the electric grid.
“The Biden Administration is willing to sacrifice the American auto industry and its workers in service of its radical green agenda. We just aren’t buying it. Demand for EVs continues to fall, and even those who want to buy one can’t afford it amid historic inflation,”said Attorney General Coleman.
Oklahoma Solicitor General Garry Gaskins, II also signed the challenge for Attorney General Drummond. The Oklahoma Attorney General is part of a long list of legal challenges to the Biden administration’s EPA and Securities and Exchange Commission over controversial environmental rules.
In early April, he was part of a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s new methane emissions limits on the oil and gas industry. He was among several attorneys general who filed suit in mid-March. Drummond also challenged the EPA’S 2023 rejection of Oklahoma’s plan to address its contributions to air-quality problems in downwind states.
Just last week, Drummond joined nearly two dozen attorneys general led by Florida AG Ashley Moody in challenging the EPA’s use of race in determining pollution.