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42 U.S.C. § 7522 — Prohibited acts (tampering)
United States Code
Overview
Federal law prohibits removing or rendering inoperative any emission control device installed on or in a motor vehicle or engine, and prohibits manufacturing, selling or installing defeat devices.
Repeal relevance: This is the tampering prohibition on which criminal and civil defeat-device cases (Troy Lake, Diesel Freak, Kory Willis and others) rest. A pardon does not repeal this statute; only Congress does.
Operative language
Short paraphrases of the operative text. Read the full section at the source.
42 U.S.C. § 7522(a)(3) · Open source
It is prohibited for any person to remove or render inoperative any device or element of design installed on or in a motor vehicle or engine in compliance with regulations, and to manufacture, sell, offer to sell, or install any part or component whose principal effect is to bypass, defeat, or render inoperative such a device.
Establishes: The federal anti-tampering and defeat-device prohibition — the statutory hook for both criminal (§ 7413(c)) and civil (§ 7524) enforcement against tuners.
Plain English: This is the law that makes deleting or defeating a factory emissions system illegal at the federal level. It is what PPEI, Elite Diesel and Diesel Freak were prosecuted under.
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