From the Sacramento Bee

California and like-minded states are girding for a legal battle with the Trump administration on whether those states have gone too far in controlling greenhouse gases from automobiles, a prospective case that legal scholars say – barring a last-minute settlement – is sure to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies are expected to announce, as soon as this week, a rollback of national fuel economy standards for vehicles. They could also revoke California’s ability to set its own, tougher, air pollution limits. If the Trump administration  challenges California’s longstanding latitude to set its own emissions rules, it would be wading into untested legal waters, said Deborah Sivas, a law professor and expert on the Clean Air Act at Stanford University.

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[In April],  in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, 2018 WL 1999120 (Apr. 30, 2018) (Dynamex), the California Supreme Court upended the prevailing understanding of the independent contractor-employee distinction under California law. In a ruling that is certain to have wide-ranging repercussions for companies that rely on independent contractors, the Court declined to apply the multi-factor common law test derived from its 1989 decision in S.G. Borello & Sons, Inc. v. Dep’t of Indus. Rel’ns, 48 Cal. 3d 341 (1989) (Borello) to the question of whether a worker is an “employee” subject to the minimum wage and overtime protections of the California Industrial Welfare Commission’s (“IWC”) wage orders. Instead, the Court adopted a simple, three-part test that likely will expand the wage orders’ reach. Continue reading.

Have we reached the point where air pollution regulations are harming people more than air pollution itself?

That’s the question at the heart of the dispute between the Trump administration and California about the Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution program known as NAAQS, the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.  Continue reading.