{"id":152319,"date":"2026-01-27T23:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/152319\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T23:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:11:10","slug":"epa-wont-let-california-impose-emissions-inspection-on-out-of-state-trucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/152319\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA won’t let California impose emissions inspection on out-of-state trucks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration on Tuesday blocked California<\/a> from applying heavy-duty emissions inspection and maintenance requirements to out-of-state trucks.<\/p>\n

The decision marks another clash in the energy and environmental battles between deep-blue California and the Trump administration, which worked with congressional Republicans last year to overturn several other waiver approvals the Biden administration issued for the state.<\/p>\n

California will be able to require heavy-duty vehicles registered in the state to occasionally have their pollution control systems examined and repaired if needed, part of an effort to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions that plague air quality in much of the state. But California can\u2019t require trucks from other states or Mexico or Canada to go through those inspections, EPA said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump EPA will never back down from holding California accountable and stopping them from imposing unnecessary regulations on the entire nation,\u201d Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Background: The California Air Resources Board in 2021 adopted its Clean Truck Check rule that increased inspection and maintenance requirements for heavy-duty vehicles. Mobile sources and especially cargo-hauling trucks and other big-rigs emit NOx, a precursor to smog.<\/p>\n

EPA last year proposed partially approving the plan<\/a> as to trucks registered in California, but rejecting it for those registered in other states and countries. Because of its major ports, the state receives a significant amount of out-of-state heavy-duty traffic, which contributes as much as 30 percent of the states heavy-duty NOx emissions, according to CARB.<\/p>\n

Details: CARB pushed back last year on EPA\u2019s proposal, noting that the agency alleged in its press release<\/a> announcing the proposed decision that California\u2019s rule was \u201cbased on an extreme climate ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEPA\u2019s gratuitous and prejudicial statements \u2026 are utterly inconsistent with the requirements of reasoned decision-making and simply arbitrary and capricious,\u201d CARB wrote in September comments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Tuesday\u2019s final decision, EPA rejected CARB\u2019s allegation that its motivation was pretextual.<\/p>\n

\u201cCommenters are taking the press release out of context to avoid grappling with the rationale and basis for decision included in the proposed rule,\u201d the agency wrote.<\/p>\n

The state also argued it had addressed the constitutional issues with inspecting out-of-state vehicles that were laid out by EPA.<\/p>\n

But in its final decision, EPA maintained that the out-of-state inspections burdened parties outside the state with the costs of emissions reductions to achieve local air quality gains, running afoul of both the Constitutional and the Clean Air Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cPut another way, extending the regulation to out-of-state vehicles serves the illegitimate objective of outsourcing the costs of attaining the [National Ambient Air Quality Standards] within California to other States and vehicle owners and operators in those States, rather than identifying additional emissions reduction strategies within the traditional ambit of purely in-state sources encompassed within and creditable to the State of California,\u201d EPA wrote.<\/p>\n

What’s next: The final rule was signed by acting EPA Region 9 Administrator Michael Martucci and will be published in the Federal Register soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration on Tuesday blocked California from applying heavy-duty emissions inspection and maintenance requirements to out-of-state trucks.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9458,9,8,75106,4818,75107,75108,75105],"class_list":{"0":"post-152319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-air-resources-board","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-emissions-inspection","13":"tag-epa","14":"tag-heavy-duty-vehicles","15":"tag-maintenance-requirements","16":"tag-nox-emissions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}