Sierra Club is defending state and local building electrification efforts against industry attack in courts across the country. Since the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down Berkeley’s city ordinance banning gas infrastructure in new buildings, gas industry groups have filed a dozen copy-cat suits. Sierra Club attorneys have intervened or submitted amicus briefs, or plan to do so, in eleven cases. In July, the courts in two of those cases rejected the gas industry’s arguments.
On July 18, a federal court in Los Angeles upheld the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s zero-emission boiler standards, rejecting a challenge brought by industry groups that relied on the same legal arguments used in the Berkeley case. Sierra Club attorneys Nihal Shrinath and Jim Dennison worked with Earthjustice and allies to help defend the standards in court.
The court’s order agrees with legal arguments made by the District and our intervenor coalition. In strong language, the order definitively places emissions regulations or “what comes out of appliances” outside of the scope of EPCA [the federal law that the industry groups’ challenge relied on] which regulates how much and what goes into appliances (i.e. energy efficiency). The order emphasizes the need for the boiler standards to address longstanding and dire air quality issues, and agrees with us that “there is no reason to believe that Congress ever intended or even contemplated that the EPCA would preempt emission regulations designed to combat air pollution.” The court squarely rejected the industry groups’ arguments that the “very narrow” Berkeley decision should apply in this case, which involves emission standards rather than a prohibition on gas connections.
Next, on July 23, the federal district court for the Northern District of New York upheld New York State’s building electrification law, which requires most new buildings to be all-electric by 2028. That court also rejected an industry challenge that relied on the Berkeley ruling and did not mince words when it declared that ruling flawed: “Recognizing the flaws in the Ninth Circuit panel’s reasoning, the Court declines to follow California Restaurant Assoc., and instead is persuaded by the more reasoned analysis outlined in the dissent opinion for California Restaurant Assoc., and in Ass’n of Contracting Plumbers of the City of New York, Inc., and adopts that analysis here.” Like the South Coast emission standards, New York’s law was passed to address air pollution from combustion of fossil fuels in buildings. Sierra Club attorneys Josh Berman and Bridget Lee submitted an amicus brief detailing the public health benefits of the state law and electrification in general, which the court cited.