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Attorney General William Tong has joined another multi-state lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time over federal fuel-economy rules.
Tong’s office announced Friday that Connecticut is part of a coalition of 20 attorneys general and several cities challenging a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) final rule that resets corporate average fuel economy standards for passenger cars and light trucks. The petition was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The coalition argues the rule is arbitrary and contrary to Congress’s direction that NHTSA set standards at the “maximum feasible” level.
“Gas is pushing five dollars a gallon right now. This is the worst possible time to make our cars less efficient and more wasteful,” Tong said. “Trump needs to stop shilling for Big Oil and drop his tariff madness and reckless foreign wars.”
AAA’s Connecticut average for regular gasoline was $4.46 a gallon as of October 3, up sharply from about $3.13 a year earlier. Premium averaged $5.48. The national average was $4.38.
NHTSA published the rule September 30 as the “Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule III.” The agency says earlier standards were distorted by electric-vehicle credits and failed the statutory test of technological feasibility, economic practicability, energy conservation, and the effect of other federal vehicle rules. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has described the change as ending what the department calls an illegal mandate that pushed automakers toward more expensive electric vehicles. NHTSA estimates the revised standards would produce a fleet average of about 34.9 mpg by model year 2031, versus a prior trajectory near 50 mpg.
Tong’s release says the new standards require less efficiency than the U.S. fleet achieved in 2021, ignore millions of electric vehicles already on the road, and paper over nearly $220 billion in fuel savings drivers would have kept under the previous rules. It also says NHTSA set climate-damage costs at zero and will end the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) credit-trading program in 2028.
The suit involves a familiar Democrat attorney general coalition: California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and others, plus Chicago, New York City, Denver, and San Francisco.
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