The United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, has affirmed a district court decision entering a permanent injunction against enforcement of regulations adopted by the California Air Resources Board that required vessels to limit emissions from vessel diesel auxiliary engines and diesel electric engines within twenty-four miles of the California coast. Pacific Merchant Shipping Association v. Goldstene, 517 F.3d 1108 (9th Cir. 2008). In a unanimous decision authored by Court of Appeals Judge Barry Silverman, the court held that the regulations violated Section 209(e)(2)(a) of the Clean Air Act because they imposed “standards relating to emissions” for the vessel engines, but CARB had not obtained authorization from the federal Environmental Protection Agency as it was required to do under the Act. Since the decision on the Clean Air Act claim provided the plaintiff Association full relief, neither the district court nor the Court of Appeals decided the Association’s second claim which asserted that the regulation was also preempted with respect to its extension of the limitation beyond the state‘s three mile seaward boundary as established by the federal Submerged Lands Act.

The case was originally filed by Flynn Delich & Wise LLP on behalf of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association in the federal district court in Sacramento ion December, 2006. District Judge William Shubb entered the judgment and injunction in favor of the Association in the district court. Erich Wise, a partner in the Long Beach office of Flynn Delich & Wise LLP was lead counsel for the Association. He was assisted principally by partner Nicholas Politis and associate, Aleks Drumalds.

The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association filed the suit in order to reinforce the important national policy of uniformity in international maritime law. California’s failure to seek EPA authorization and its extension of the regulation to waters beyond its territorial