[Christ]

Does the regulation only apply to tailpipe emissions, or does it also apply to other conformities, such as VOC content of potentially harmful compounds used in production, recyclable content, etc.

Regardless, they complied in 2008... So why not 2009?

If their intention was to get away from having to pay for the regulatory certificate, there are much better ways than assumed immunity from a statute... They should have complied anyway, then lobbied to have the regulation altered so that they didn't have to comply further, so that the responsible agency (in this case EPA) could accurately determine whether or not the company was actually exempt from all, or only parts of the statute/regulation.