Legal News

Preemption Means Latka Won?t Have To Fix Yellow Hybrids ? Yet

By Dan Slater

One of the 2,200 new “sunshine” cabs which were put into service in New York, June 19, 1936. (AP/J. Stirling Getchell)

So much talk these days of Wyeth and preemption in the drug context. Ever wonder how preemption works in the world of emissions standards?

Perhaps not, but let’s head to New York City — home to about 8 million people, more than 13,000 taxis (and, of course, LBHQ) — where a federal judge has just blocked Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to reduce air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions by requiring owners and operators of taxis to switch to more fuel-efficient hybrids. (Here’s a report from the NYT’s City Room blog. That beauty to your left is not a hybrid, but rather, we’re guessing, a gas-guzzling DeSoto S-1, circa 1930.)

The reason? Preemption. Judge Paul A. Crotty ruled that the new regulations, which were to take effect on Saturday and would’ve resulted in a virtually all-hybrid fleet by 2012, were preempted under federal law, which reserves regulation of fuel economy and emissions standards to federal agencies.

In a statement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, “The decision is not a ruling against hybrid cabs, rather a ruling that archaic Washington regulations are applicable and therefore New York City, and all other cities, are prevented from choosing to create cleaner air and a healthier place to live.” Tell us what you really think, Mr. Mayor!

Earlier this year, Ron Sherman, the president of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which sued in September to block implementation of the rule, reportedly said that “small, light passenger hybrids should not be used as New York City taxicabs, which clock upwards of 100,000 miles a year each and often run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” He argued that the Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed rule “ignores the laws of physics, which dictate that the larger the vehicle’s interior space, the safer the vehicle’s occupants are in an accident.”

The NYT reports that the City has 13,237 yellow cabs. Nearly 1,500 of them are already hybrids as a result of voluntary efforts. The new rule would’ve required that all new taxicabs coming into service achieve a fuel-efficiency city rating of 25 miles per gallon or higher, rising to 30 m.p.g. by Oct. 1, 2009. The gasoline-powered Ford Crown Victoria, notes the NYT, which in the late 1990s supplanted the Chevrolet Caprice as the workhorse of the city’s taxi fleet, gets about 12 to 14 m.p.g.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 31, 2008 (boomark / email).