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Arizona and four other states are seeking a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the federal government can regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions so states can, too.

On Thursday, the five states joined 13 other states that already had sued the Environmental Protection Agency to force it to regulate greenhouse gases. The EPA ruled in 2003 that it doesn't have the right to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from cars. A U.S. Court of Appeals panel upheld the EPA in 2005. The high court already has decided to hear this case.

Arizona's entry into the three-year-old legal case stems mainly from the state's desire to have the right to impose new "clean-car" restrictions that limit automobile carbon-dioxide emissions, said a lawyer for the state.

"It clearly is a state's-rights issue that we should have the authority to adopt such a program if we are going to control and reduce the amount of climate-change pollutants coming from motor vehicles in the state," said state Assistant Attorney General Joe Mikitish.

California and 10 other states already have adopted such rules, which would cut vehicle CO2 emissions by 30 percent. An Arizona Climate Change Advisory Group has recommended to Gov. Janet Napolitano that the state adopt a similar plan.

But the California program is challenged in court by nine car manufacturers. They say it is too costly for too few benefits, and states lack the authority.

Napolitano's advisory group conducted a statewide inventory showing that the transportation sector was the leading contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the five states' brief.

It will be up to the governor and other policy-makers to decide whether it's important for Arizona to have a clean-car program, Mikitish said, adding, "We're saying our policy-makers ought to have that right."

In the EPA and Appeals Court decisions, the agency and court wrote that the National Research Council, a research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded in 2001 that the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming cannot be unequivocally proved.

But in a separate brief filed Thursday, 18 scientists — including three from the University of Arizona — wrote that the EPA misrepresented the academy's conclusions "by selectively quoting statements about uncertainty while ignoring statements of certainty and near-certainty. …"

The scientists quoted the academy report as saying "it is virtually certain" that human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions lead to global climate change.