NEW YORK — According to the New York Times, a federal appeals court yesterday blocked President Bush’s plans to open all American highways to Mexican trucks, ruling that the administration could not open the roads until it conducted a study of how the trucks would affect the environment.
The court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, concluded that the government had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” by deciding to open the borders to tens of thousands of Mexican trucks without conducting an environmental review. The National Environmental Policy Act requires such reviews for all government actions that might significantly affect the environment.
Several environmental lawyers said that yesterday’s decision by a three-judge panel could indefinitely suspend the administration’s plans to open the border.
Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said, “We are reviewing the court’s order, and no determination has been made of what our next step will be.”
The administration’s options include asking the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case, appealing to the Supreme Court or conducting an environmental review, which often takes six months.
A 21-year moratorium has prevented Mexican trucks from traveling freely in the United States, with several presidents citing safety and pollution concerns. But on Nov. 27, President Bush announced that he would give Mexican trucks free access to United States highways as soon as more than 130 pending applications from Mexican truck companies were reviewed for safety and other matters.
Mr. Bush moved to admit the trucks after an international panel ruled 23 months ago that the United States was violating the North American Free Trade Agreement by continuing to restrict Mexican trucks to a 20-mile-wide border zone in which they transfer cargo to United States trucks.
In yesterday’s ruling, the court emphatically stated that Nafta’s provisions did not supersede the nation’s environmental laws.
Judge Kim McLane Warlaw wrote, “Although we agree with the importance of the United States’ compliance with its treaty obligations with its southern neighbor, Mexico, such compliance cannot come at the cost of violating United States law.”
The lawsuit was brought by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Public Citizen, the Environmental Law Foundation and the California Trucking Association. These groups feared that admitting Mexican trucks would hurt the air and water, endanger safety, hurt American trucking companies and take jobs from American truck drivers. Mexican drivers often earn $7 an hour, about one-third the pay of many Teamsters long-haul drivers.
James P. Hoffa, president of the Teamsters union, said, “In a rush to open the border, the administration failed to pay attention to the health concerns of U.S. citizens.”
Environmental groups asserted that President Bush’s decision to open the highways without an environmental analysis was another example of his short-changing the environment.
“What happened here just adds to the list of actions showing the administration is insensitive to the environment,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “This is a very significant ruling. It’s the first time that any court of appeals has explicitly said that Nafta does not excuse a federal agency from having to comply with federal regulations.”
The decision comes after many lawmakers voiced concern that some international trade panels had ruled that Nafta’s provisions superseded various state laws and regulations.
Administration officials say Mexico has tightened its pollution standards for trucks so that they now conform with American standards. But the American regulations will grow stricter in 2004 and 2007, while the Mexican standards are not scheduled to. Leonardo Alcivar, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, said: “The administration remains committed to Nafta. We believe we complied with all applicable environmental requirements in issuing our regulations and that the petitioners’ allegations are without merit.”
Mexican officials have repeatedly criticized Washington for not opening the border. Mireya Magaña, a spokeswoman at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, said her government was studying the ruling.
The plaintiffs estimated that opening the border would bring in at least 30,000 Mexican trucks a year, many of them built before 1994, when Mexico significantly tightened emissions standards for trucks.
The court ruled that the Transportation Department had violated the Clean Air Act by failing to determine whether allowing in Mexican trucks would violate California’s air quality standards.
The ruling also said the department had not examined whether the increased emissions would significantly affect air quality in areas like Southern California and Texas, which would see a greater concentration of traffic since they are closest to Mexico.
The court criticized the department for looking only at how increased emissions would affect air quality nationwide. In a preliminary examination, the department had concluded that the heightened emissions would be “very small relative to national levels of emissions.”