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Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown has filed or signed onto two dozen lawsuits by states challenging Trump administration actions.
But not this one.
When California filed suit last week to defend its ability to set tougher vehicle emission standards — standards aimed at speeding adoption of electric vehicles — 10 states that had adopted the standards quickly joined the suit. Even though Maryland has adopted the California rules, it did not join.
A spokesperson for Brown said the attorney general’s office is “monitoring the California lawsuit while we assess the best path for the State to remain vigilant in enforcing standards that will help us achieve these climate goals.”
“Here in Maryland, we have made it a priority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, setting ambitious goals to preserve our clean air and water,” wrote Kelsey Hartman, the spokesperson.
But environmental groups, still smarting from Gov. Wes Moore’s (D) decision in April to delay penalties under the California rules, were not pleased by Brown’s hesitation.
“If it is a ‘priority’ for Maryland to reduce greenhouse gases, then we should be first in line to sue over the Trump effort to remove our legal right to require cleaner cars,” said Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, in a statement. “Instead we are completely missing in action on one of the most important climate lawsuits of the Trump era.”
Tidwell called it “inconceivable that Attorney General Brown is not joining California and ten other Clean Car states in fighting President Trump in court.”
The Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club urged the state to join California’s suit “and use every other tool at its disposal to defend our clean vehicle programs.” Lindsey Mendelson, the club’s senior transportation campaign representative, said in a statement that it’s important for Maryland to help keep the California regulations “on the books,” saying the congressional votes upending the program were “clearly unlawful.”
President Donald Trump has issued executive orders to roll back clean energy programs, including a freeze on billions of dollars for states to build electric vehicle charging stations along key highways under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program. Maryland joined 15 other states to challenge that move in court.
The action reining in the California regulations was an act of Congress, not an executive order.
Ramón Palencia-Calvo, senior director for Chispa Maryland, a program of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, said Tuesday the league is “still trying to seek clarification” on why Brown had not joined California’s suit. While it’s still possible Maryland could join the suit, Palencia-Calvo said, the EV rules are “key programs” for reducing climate pollution, particularly in vulnerable communities that tend to surround busy state highways.
“Here at Maryland LCV, we continue to support implementation of these two programs,” he said.
It’s not the first disappointment this year for Maryland advocates over the California rules.
In April, Moore issued an executive order that allows the state to delay financial penalties for car manufacturers that do not meet sales targets that were set to kick in next year with the introduction of model year 2027 electric vehicles.
Originally, 43% of new cars sold in Maryland in model year 2027 were supposed to be zero-emission. Under Moore’s order, penalties would not be applied for the 2027 and 2028 model years, unless California officials reach a new agreement on the rule’s requirements with car manufacturers representing at least 40% of the market share.
The order did not change the ultimate goal of the program, which is to require that 100% of passenger cars sold in the state by model year 2035 be electric.
Administration officials noted that, as of 2024, EV sales represented about 12% of new car purchases in Maryland, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation. Moore’s order relaxing the penalties was needed to give “manufacturers, dealers, and Marylanders a fair shot to prepare” for the higher sale targets, they said.
Maryland auto dealers had expressed concern that car manufacturers would send fewer vehicles to the state in order to ensure that the percentage of EVs would be high enough to meet the state’s target. State officials had previously argued that manufacturers could trade credits with one another to significantly reduce their obligations.
In May, with California’s Advanced Clean Cars program under fire, Moore joined 10 other governors in an “Affordable Clean Cars Coalition” to “sustain America’s transition to cleaner and more affordable cars, support U.S. automotive manufacturers and workers, and preserve states’ clean air authority,” according to a Department of the Environment news release.
Moore’s April executive order also created a working group to study how the Advanced Clean Cars rule can be “successfully implemented” in Maryland.
Peter Kitzmiller, president of the Maryland Auto Dealer’s Association, said he is excited for that group to convene, because his members are eager to sell EVs, having already invested in the vehicles and their charging technology.
“We have to sell these vehicles and we need to sell them in bigger numbers than we’re doing,” Kitzmiller said. “We’ve got to get a return on our investment.”
Kitzmiller said he is also concerned about other federal action on EVs, including the possible end to a $7,500 tax credit for buyers. That loss could drive EV purchases down in the short term, he said, but he is hoping that any decline would be temporary.
“That’s going to be the thing to look at: What’s the impact going to be on the market?” Kitzmiller said.
The California rules were aimed at helping create a market for EVs. In order to set emissions standards stricter than the federal government’s, California receives a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Under that authority, California has set the EV sales rules.
But the Republican-led Congress adopted resolutions disproving of the waivers under the Congressional Review Act. Trump signed the measures June 12, saying in a statement that the resolutions were “ending the electric vehicle mandate for good.”
“It is the Federal Government, not States, that should establish vehicle emissions standards given the inherently interstate nature of air quality; a patchwork of State vehicle regulations on this subject is unworkable,” Trump wrote. “Our Constitution does not allow one State special status to create standards that limit consumer choice and impose an electric vehicle mandate upon the entire Nation.”
In its lawsuit, California argued that the Congressional Review Act could not be used to overturn its waivers, because the waiver decisions are not considered formal federal rules.
“The CRA has never before been used in any context that resembles this one. It has certainly never been used, as it was here, to negate particular state laws,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The suit says the review act was simply an end run around the lengthy process of rolling back the waivers through an administrative process at EPA, which Trump did during his first administration. Congressional leaders and administration officials “took these unprecedented steps because they saw the CRA as a quick and easy way to ‘take … down’ California’s regulations,” the lawsuit said.
Kitzmiller said he was “a little surprised” not to see Maryland on the list of litigants beside California.
But he said he “wouldn’t read too much into it.” It was always expected that California would lead the litigation countering the Trump administration’s efforts to end the program, Kitzmiller said.
“It doesn’t mean that Maryland doesn’t care about EVs, or anything like that,” he said.
