A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled on May 29 that lower courts had overstepped their bounds when reviewing federal agency actions pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County is expected to have significant implications for how courts handle challenges to infrastructure projects based on federal agency NEPA reviews. 23-975 Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County (05/29/25)
NEPA, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1969, is considered one of the foundational environmental laws passed at the beginning of the modern environmental movement requiring federal agencies to take into account environmental impacts when approving projects/permits. NEPA’s role in the approval of national infrastructure has grown in recent years as environmental groups have utilized it to challenge and/or delay the approval of large infrastructure projects by pressing arguments that NEPA reviews required federal agencies to take into account not only the immediate environmental impacts of a proposed project but also impacts upstream and downstream of the project should it be approved. Further, the courts have increasingly played a far larger and more active role in reviewing the judgment of the federal agencies in determining whether an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) supported the approval of a project/permit.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion for the court reversing the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which had found in 2013 the EIS performed by the Surface Transportation Board in reviewing the project did not address impacts from increased upstream oil and gas exploration activities that would result from construction of the project. Ultimately, both liberal and conservative justices agreed with the final decision.
Emphasizing the role that NEPA is to play in the review of projects, Justice Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, “Simply stated, NEPA is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock” and that “[t]he goal of the law is to inform agency decision making, not to paralyze it.” The Court wrote that NEPA ensures agencies and the public are aware of the environmental consequences of certain proposed infrastructure projects, but that NEPA’s role is purely procedural in this process. Citing prior precedent, the Court found that
NEPA “does not mandate particular results but simply prescribes the necessary process” for an agency’s environmental review of a project. Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council, 490 U. S. 332, 350. Some federal courts reviewing NEPA cases have assumed an aggressive role in policing agency compliance with NEPA and have not applied NEPA with the judicial deference demanded by the statutory text and the Court’s cases. When, as here, a party argues that an agency action was arbitrary and capricious due to a deficiency in an EIS, the “only role for a court” is to confirm that the agency has addressed environmental consequences and feasible alternatives as to the relevant project. Strycker’s Bay Neighborhood Council, Inc. v. Karlen, 444 U. S. 223, 227. Further, the adequacy of an EIS is relevant only to the question of whether an agency’s final decision (here, to approve the railroad project) was reasonably explained. Judicial deference in NEPA cases extends to an agency’s determination of what details are relevant in an EIS.
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The textual focus of NEPA is the “proposed action”—the project at hand—not other separate projects. §4332(2)(C). Courts should defer to agencies’ discretionary decisions about where to draw the line when considering indirect environmental effects and whether to analyze effects from other projects separate in time or place. See Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen, 541 U. S. 752, 767. In sum, when assessing significant environmental effects and feasible alternatives for purposes of NEPA, an agency will invariably make a series of fact-dependent, context-specific, and policy-laden choices about the depth and breadth of its inquiry—and also about the length, content, and level of detail of the resulting EIS. Courts should afford substantial deference and should not micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness. Even a deficient EIS does not necessarily require vacating an agency’s project approval, absent reason to believe that the agency might disapprove the project if it added more to the EIS. Cf. 5 U. S. C. §706. Pp. 6–15.
Consistent with these findings, the Court found that the Surface Transportation Board’s determination that its EIS need not evaluate possible environmental effects from upstream and downstream projects separate from the Uinta Basin Railway complied with NEPA’s procedural requirements and that while indirect environmental effects of a project may fall within NEPA’s scope, the fact that the project might foreseeably lead to the construction or increased use of a separate project does not mean the agency must consider that separate project’s environmental effects.
The Court’s three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—agreed with the outcome of the case but had different reasoning. Writing for the three, Sotomayor, in a concurring opinion, said that such environmental reviews conducted by federal agencies should be limited to the agencies’ own expertise. The Surface Transportation Board, which conducted the review in this case, is primarily focused on transportation projects, not oil refining.
“Under NEPA, agencies must consider the environmental impacts for which their decisions would be responsible,” Sotomayor wrote. “Here, the board correctly determined it would not be responsible for the consequences of oil production upstream or downstream from the railway because it could not lawfully consider those consequences as part of the approval process.”
The Court’s ruling gives substantial latitude and deference to the federal agencies to determine the scope of its review of indirect environmental effects and impacts of projects pursuant to NEPA. The project is designed to carry crude oil out of the Uinta Basin and connect it to the national railway network, where it would travel to Gulf Coast refineries.
