Trump signed three CRA resolutions revoking California Clean Air Act waivers; GAO and Senate parliamentarian found CRA inapplicable

On June 12, 2025, President Trump signed H.J. Res. 87, H.J. Res. 88, and H.J. Res. 89 into law, revoking three EPA Clean Air Act waivers that authorized California to enforce stricter vehicle emissions standards than federal law requires. California's § 209(b) waiver authority dates to the Clean Air Act's 1967 enactment and has been granted under every subsequent administration; it is the legal basis for the state's long-running independent emissions regulatory program that over a dozen states mirror. The administration and Republican-controlled Congress used the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 statute providing fast-track procedures to repeal executive agency rules, as the vehicle for revocation.

Both the Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian — the Senate's nonpartisan legal arbiter — had issued formal findings that EPA Clean Air Act waivers are not "rules" within the CRA's definition and therefore are not subject to its repeal procedures. The administration's position that EPA waivers qualify as CRA-reviewable rules was explicitly rejected by these nonpartisan arbiters before the resolutions passed. Eleven states filed suit the same day the bills were signed.

The legal consequence of using the CRA mechanism goes beyond the immediate revocations. The CRA imposes a permanent "substantially similar" bar: once a rule (or here, a waiver) is repealed under CRA, EPA is barred by statute from issuing any rule or action deemed "substantially similar" in the future, absent new legislation. The application of this bar to EPA waiver authority means the revocations function as a permanent preemption of California's emissions regulatory independence — an outcome without a statutory basis in the CRA's own terms, according to the GAO and parliamentarian findings.