California is beginning to implement a ban on trucks over 14,000 pounds made before 2010, and enlisting the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce the rule, putting the federal government on the side of one state against the others, adding more strain to a supply chain in crisis and driving some truckers to park their rigs for good.

The California Air Resources Board created the regulations in 2008 without going through the legislative process, similar to the way the EPA and other federal agencies sometimes act. Now that they’ve taken effect, 70,000 trucks are illegal and ineligible for registration, with their drivers subject to citation if they hit the open road.

“One of the things that really affects us in trucking is CARB’s lack of wanting to deal with this issue,” the director of government affairs for the Western States Trucking Association, Joe Rajkovacz, told KCRA-TV, noting that the state rejected requests for a one-year delay to give them time to adjust.

“They have simply decided they are not going to go out and spend $150,000 on a truck that could lead them to bankruptcy,” Mr. Rajkovacz said of the drivers he represents. Retrofitting existing rigs to meet the new standards isn’t any more practical, he said, and as a result, all those big rigs and 10 percent of the state’s commercial vehicles may soon sit idle.

“Whenever you pass a law and the technology isn’t there,” the owner of FW Trucking, Tim Thomas, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “the manufacturers will only put out what they can… You can’t take that big of a percentage of the commercial vehicles off the road with no consequence.”

Noting that EPA has been “enforcing CARB regulations against certain out-of-state transportation companies,” the law firm of Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary, which serves the transportation industry, writes, “If a company has not implemented a compliance plan, it may be at risk when EPA comes calling, because EPA has discretion to propose significant penalties.”

The rules had been on hold during the Trump administration, which maintained that setting them is a federal power, but in March, President Biden’s EPA reinstated California’s authority to set emission standards and limit vehicle sales. By helping enforce those mandates, the White House may now run afoul of the law.

In 1959, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Bibb v. Navajo Freight Lines, Inc., that an Illinois law requiring unique mudguards on trucks was unconstitutional under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and placed undue burden on individuals from other states to comply.

“Policy decisions are for the state legislature,” the high court stated, “absent federal entry into the field.” If swapping in new mud guards was considered a bridge too far, how can California require trucks from out of state to swap engines if they wish to serve businesses and farms, not to mention the impact on buses for transport, which are also covered?

The new regulations were couched as a safety concern. “Diesel exhaust is responsible for 70 percent of the cancer risk from airborne toxics,” CARB states. “Therefore, by January 1, 2023, nearly all trucks and buses will be required to have 2010 or newer model year engines to reduce particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen emissions.”

Health was the same rationale for the Illinois statute about mudguards, but the court ruled in Bibb that unless the state could conclude that “the total effect of the law as a safety measure … is so slight or problematical as not to outweigh the national interest in keeping interstate commerce free from interferences,” they had to uphold existing law.

During the pandemic, while the rest of the nation was locked down, truckers continued to haul the food, fuel, and other essentials that kept the nation from suffering an even greater disaster. California has now turned on them, driving many out of business.

That the Biden administration is helping enforce these rules also betrays a lack of awareness and vision, the same one that led to the supply chain crisis in the first place, all while ignoring its mandate to keep commerce flowing between the states and showing little concern for the real-life impact on citizens.