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The Trump administration is going after gas bans in two California cities.
Last week, the federal government sued to block the San Francisco Bay Area’s Morgan Hill and Petaluma from prohibiting the use of fossil gas in new buildings. Both have populations of less than 60,000.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the restrictions violate a 1975 federal law that governs appliance efficiency standards. Climate advocates decried the move as federal overreach.
“Mayors and the people who elect them should decide the type of energy that powers the future of their communities,” Kate Wright, executive director of Climate Mayors, said in a statement. “The Justice Department’s lawsuit does nothing but tie the hands of local leaders who seek to help families find relief from high energy prices.”
More than 150 local governments have adopted some form of zero-emissions standards for new buildings, from banning gas outright to encouraging electrification. Such rules can benefit not only households’ comfort, health, and resilience but also their pocketbooks. Depending on local factors such as weather and energy costs, residents could save thousands of dollars over the lifetime of their homes’ superefficient electric appliances.
Why did the Trump administration target Morgan Hill and Petaluma? “I see it as part of a … broader harassment campaign between the federal government and states and cities that it’s unhappy with,” said Amy Turner, director of the Cities Climate Law Initiative at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
In April 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring the attorney general to identify state and local laws “burdening the … use of domestic energy resources” — namely fossil fuels, not local solar or wind — and take “all appropriate action” to stop their enforcement.
Empowered, the Department of Justice sued four Democrat-led states last year: New York and Vermont to block Climate Superfund laws, which would make oil and gas producers pay for their greenhouse gas pollution; and Hawaii and Michigan to prevent them from suing fossil fuel companies for climate damages. The cases are ongoing.
Now the administration is attempting to crush municipal efforts to curb fossil fuel use in buildings. But whether the Department of Justice’s lawsuit will be viable remains in doubt, Turner explained. “There are some really significant questions around whether the federal government has standing to bring this case.”
Morgan Hill’s and Petaluma’s ordinances — passed in 2019 and 2021, respectively — are essentially relics of a laxer era when gas construction across California went largely unchecked, according to Matt Vespa, senior attorney at the nonprofit Earthjustice.
“California’s really moved on,” he said. “We have a very strong state code now [that’s] pushing buildings to be all-electric,” making it less important that cities themselves block gas hookups.
The Golden State’s latest building standard, which took effect Jan. 1, encourages gas-free construction more vigorously than ever, according to Vespa. The code is also technology-neutral, stopping short of banning new gas connections.
Instead, the rules require developers to meet specific efficiency standards, which are based on the performance of electric heat pumps, he said. Heat-pump appliances are about two to five times as energy efficient as gas furnaces and water heaters.
Developers could choose to install gas in their buildings anyway. But for an edifice to pass muster, it would need more efficiency improvements, such as a thicker jacket of insulation or triple-pane windows. Plus, the code requires that certain new buildings equipped with gas also be “electric-ready,” meaning they have the electrical service and wiring required for the structures to eventually go fully electric.
California is also shifting the economics of gas and all-electric construction. In 2022, the state nixed subsidies for gas lines to new buildings; and in 2024, it eliminated electric-line subsidies to mixed-fuel construction. What’s more, developers of all-electric homes can claim incentives of $1,400 to $5,500 per gas-free unit through the California Electric Homes program, which still has $24 million in its coffers.
In its court challenge against Morgan Hill and Petaluma, the Trump administration is using the same premise that struck down Berkeley, California’s pioneering gas ban in 2023.
In California Restaurant Association v. Berkeley, a three-judge panel for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) preempts the city’s ban on gas hookups. The court’s reasoning, in brief, is that because this federal law prevents jurisdictions from deploying differing standards for the energy use and efficiency of covered appliances, it invalidates local bans preventing the use of gas appliances.
If you’re confused, you’re not alone. Many judges have found the EPCA argument flawed, even in the Berkeley case. When the three presiding judges decided not to authorize a rehearing en banc with a larger panel of judges in 2024, 11 circuit judges dissented. It was an unusual move, rarely done.
“In nearly a decade on the bench, I have never previously written or joined a dissent from a denial of rehearing en banc,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Michelle T. Friedland. “I feel compelled to do so now to urge any future court that interprets the Energy Policy and Conservation Act not to repeat the panel opinion’s mistakes.”
The opinion misinterpreted EPCA, she continued: “EPCA’s preemption provision guarantees uniform appliance efficiency standards. It does not create a consumer right to use any covered appliance” — such as a gas furnace.
In recent court battles invoking EPCA, judges have upheld the local laws restricting fossil fuel in new buildings in New York and New York City. These lawsuits — and many others brought on the same premise — continue to move through the courts. (In November, New York elected to pause its all-electric building standard, which would have taken effect at the end of 2025, for unrelated reasons.)
In the meantime, some towns have shifted to other tactics that encourage all-electric construction. New York City, for example, set an emissions limit of 25 kilograms of CO2 per million British thermal units that doesn’t explicitly prohibit gas use.
Regarding the future of all-electric buildings in Morgan Hill, Petaluma, and the rest of California, Vespa is sanguine.
“We see very high percentages of buildings going all-electric already,” he said. “Nothing about this lawsuit is going to change that.”
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