Twenty States Sue Biden Administration Over NEPA Phase 2 Revisions
On May 21, 2024, 20 states filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota against the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to block its Phase 2 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rulemaking.
17 States File Complaint Challenging Constitutionality of California’s Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation
On May 13, 2024, 17 states filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California challenging California’s Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) regulation.
NHTSA Adopts Rule Requiring Automatic Emergency Braking on Light Vehicles
On May 9, 2024, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a final rule adopting a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) that requires automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems in U.S. light vehicles and trucks by September 2029. The rule is required under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 (BIL), in which Congress directed NHTSA to establish FMVSS requirements for AEB systems as well as three other Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS): lane departure warnings, lane-keeping assist, and forward collision warnings (FCW).
The Enforcement Angle: New Generation of Nuclear – Advanced Reactors
Join Sidley for the Environmental Law Institute’s People Places Planet Podcast series, “The Enforcement Angle.” Through this series, Sidley lawyers discuss state and federal enforcement of environmental laws and regulations with senior enforcement officials and thought leaders on environmental enforcement in the United States and globally. The featured guests offer their insights into the challenging environmental issues facing corporations today.
U.S. EPA Proposes Revisions to Project Emissions Accounting Under New Source Review
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing revisions to the New Source Review (NSR) permitting program that would make it more difficult to net out of NSR requirements by changing how to calculate the net emissions resulting from a facility modification. EPA also proposes to define the term “project” more narrowly to prevent sources from aggregating changes to net out of major NSR requirements. The proposal would revise reforms adopted only four years earlier during the Trump administration that had provided additional flexibility to sources making changes to their operations.
Phase 2 Revisions to U.S. National Environmental Policy Act Regulations Streamline Process, Expand Agency Review
On Wednesday, May 1, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) published Phase 2 of its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rulemaking, concluding the Biden-Harris administration’s multiyear effort to “simplify and modernize” the federal environmental review process. CEQ’s Phase 2 rulemaking is broader and more comprehensive than Phase 1 — which primarily restored three narrow elements of the NEPA regulations to their pre-2020 form — and incorporates amendments as directed by Congress under the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) and BUILDER Act of 2023, including page and time limits for environmental assessments (EA) and environmental impact statements (EIS). (more…)
