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WASHINGTON — Attorneys general from 16 states and the District of Columbia, along with five environmental groups and United Auto Workers, launched a legal challenge to the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday, alleging it violated the law when it ordered thousands of new mail. trucks that run on gasoline instead of electricity.

Together, the three lawsuits, filed in two different federal courts, raise the risks of a dispute over the climate impacts of the Postal Service’s iconic delivery trucks that have plagued management for months.

Earlier this year, Gerald Connolly of Virginia, a leading House Democrat, urged to resign Postmaster general Louis DeJoy said he disregarded President Biden’s words. executive order Electrify the federal fleet by placing an order of up to $6 billion over 10 years for mostly gasoline-powered trucks.

The Postal Service is an independent organization that does not depend on the climate rules of the administration. It also has more than 231,000 vehicles, one of the largest civilian fleets in the world. The contract will be the Postal Service’s first large-scale vehicle purchase in three decades.

Environmentalists said Mr DeJoy’s order for 165,000 gasoline-powered mail delivery trucks from Oshkosh Defense, a Wisconsin-based company that manufactures military vehicles, could hurt the nation’s climate change efforts. United Auto Workers said the new trucks were expected to be built in non-union factories, breaking the president’s promise to develop environmental policies that would grow union jobs.

These criticisms could have political repercussions for the president, who is relying on the support of environmental activists and union workers to win the White House in 2020.

But the move was also illegal, according to court filings from environmentalists, the union, and the Democratic attorneys general of California, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and DC, as well as 10 other states.

They wrote that the Postal Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, or NEPA, which required it to consider the environmental impacts of vehicle purchases.

“Instead, the Postal Service first chose a manufacturer with minimal experience in electric vehicle manufacturing, signed a contract and made a substantial upfront payment for new vehicles,” the Attorney General said. “In doing so, the Postal Service failed to comply with even NEPA’s most basic requirements.”

Postal Service spokesperson Kimberly Frum said the claim was false. “The Postal Service did a solid and thorough inspection and fully complied with all our obligations,” he wrote in an email.

Ms. Frum added that the decision to buy gasoline-powered trucks instead of the more expensive electric trucks also took into account the financial woes of the Postal Service, which currently owes about $206.4 billion. Earlier this month, Mr. Biden signed a bipartisan bill that would ease some of that debt.

“While the investment will cost more than an internal combustion engine vehicle, the Postal Service is fully committed to including electric vehicles as a key part of our delivery fleet. However, as we have repeatedly stated, we must make financially prudent decisions in the necessary introduction of a new fleet of vehicles.”

The Postal Service estimated that the new vehicles would get 29.9 miles per gallon. A separate analysis by the EPA found that vehicles could achieve less than half that: just 14.7 miles per gallon. The EPA said the new trucks will only get 8.6 miles per gallon when the air conditioning is running.

While mail delivery trucks make up a small fraction of the roughly 280 million vehicles on the road in the US, environmental groups said the decision to order new gasoline-powered spares could have consequences. An all-electric fleet would not only deliver environmental benefits and help an emerging manufacturing sector, but also serve as a powerful symbol of management committed to accelerating the transition from fossil fuels.

“Instead of moving forward with common sense and available technology to mitigate the climate crisis, clean our air, and create good union jobs, the USPS has decided to continue polluting communities at a time when federal agencies must take the lead on electrification. said Katherine García, a policy expert at the Sierra Club, one of the environmental litigants.