A coalition of states, Washington, D.C. and climate activist groups have launched a lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service to stop its purchase of 148,000 delivery trucks over the next decade, contending that it’s a financially and environmentally irresponsible expenditure.

The attorney generals of 16 states, as well as Earthjustice, and the Natural Resources Defense Council claim that the USPS’s acquisition of gas-powered vehicles was not a pragmatic use of $11.3 billion, The Washington Post reported. The new trucks would only get marginally better mileage than the existing fleet owned by the service.

The plaintiffs took issue with the fact that only 10 percent of the new trucks in the contract would be electric-powered, falling short of the standards of FedEx, UPS and Amazon. President Biden has demanded that all USPS vehicles be electric by 2035.

While USPS was overdue for a new shipment of upgraded trucks, environmental organizations slammed the deal for its potential negative climate impact due to an insufficient appropriation for electric vehicles in the package.

USPS claims that it “conducted a robust and thorough review and fully complied with all of our obligations under [environmental law],” Spokeswoman Kim Frum said in a statement obtained by the Post. Its study determined that the new vehicles would emit about the same amount of climate change-contributing carbon dioxide each year as 4.3 million passenger cars.

“The Postal Service has a historic opportunity to invest in our planet and in our future. Instead, it is doubling down on outdated technologies that are bad for our environment and bad for our communities,” California attorney general Rob Bonta, whose team represents the plaintiffs, told the Post.

“Once this purchase goes through, we’ll be stuck with more than 100,000 new gas-guzzling vehicles on neighborhood streets … for the next 30 years. There won’t be a reset button,” he added. “We’re going to court to make sure the Postal Service complies with the law and considers more environmentally friendly alternatives before it makes this decision.”

The lawsuit comes just after Congress passed and Biden signed the Postal Service Reform Act, which is supposed to revamp its outdated business model. Some Republicans have characterized the bill as a de facto long-term federal bailout.

In August 2020, the USPS became the subject of political dispute over increasing its funding. Former president Trump blocked a funding boost, which some Democrats claimed was a strategy to subvert mail-in ballot access.

“They [the Democrats] want $3 1/2 billion for something that’ll turn out to be fraudulent — that’s election money basically,” Trump said at the time.

“They want $25 billion for the post office. Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. Now, in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it,” added the former president.