On May 29, 2025, in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado (2025) 605 U.S. ____, the Supreme Court gave instruction that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) “is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock,” and that NEPA’s goal “is to inform agency decisionmaking, not to paralyze it.”
Specifically, the Court overturned the D.C. Circuit’s order vacating approval of an 88-mile railroad project meant to connect oil fields in Utah to the national rail network (Project). The Court (1) held that the Court of Appeals failed to give the approving agency the appropriate substantial deference required under NEPA and (2) limited the need for agencies to evaluate environmental effects that are separate in time or place.
The Project
The Uinta Basin Railway Project is intended to connect the Uinta Basin, an oil and gas production region, to the national rail network. Although primarily for transporting petroleum products, the Project was also promoted as a way to increase shipping in the area for all goods and services, and to reduce heavy truck traffic, which contributes to highway congestion and emissions.
The U.S. Surface Transportation Board (Board) was the agency in charge of approving the project and was tasked under NEPA with preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate the Project’s impacts.
The EIS and the D.C. Circuit
The Board’s draft EIS received nearly 2,000 comments and was discussed at multiple public hearings. A year later, the Board published its final, 3,600+ page final EIS. The Board approved the project in December of 2021, “subject to extensive environmental mitigation conditions.” Ultimately, the Board did not feel it could, or that it was necessary to, disclose indirect impacts such as the increase in drilling in the Uinta Basin; noise, air quality impacts, and greenhouse gases from increased rail traffic; or the potential impacts of increased oil refining in locations where much of the oil would be transported.
Both Eagle County and the Center for Biological Diversity filed petitions for review of the Board’s approval, which the Court of Appeals consolidated. Relevant here, the petitioners alleged the Board did not take the required “hard look” at the project’s environmental impacts under NEPA. The petitioners claimed in part that “the Final EIS ignored certain upstream and downstream impacts of the Railway,” and the D.C. Circuit agreed.
The Supreme Court
The Supreme Court granted certiorari and issued an opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh reversed the D.C. Circuit.
The Court held the D.C. Circuit “did not afford the Board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases . . . [and] incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the Board to consider the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that are separate in time or place from the Uinta Basin Railway.”
The Court explained, when an agency is delegated discretion, courts review exercises of that discretion under a more deferential standard. “Under that standard, a court asks not whether it agrees with the agency decision, but rather only whether the agency action was reasonable and reasonably explained.” This, according to the Court, requires “substantial deference to the agency.”
The Court found, while it is true courts review whether an EIS is sufficiently detailed, in the end it is up to the agency to determine how detailed an EIS should be. Applying this principle to the scope of an EIS analysis, the Court held, “[s]o long as the EIS addresses environmental effects from the project at issue, courts should defer to agencies’ decisions about where to draw the line” in analyzing indirect impacts and impacts from other related-but-distinct, projects. Here, the D.C. Circuit encroached on the Board’s authority to set the scope of its analysis.
Finally, the Court held that the “focus of NEPA is the ‘proposed action’—that is, the project at hand—not other future or geographically separate projects that may be built (or expanded) as a result of or in the wake of the immediate project under consideration.” The Court explained that, “if the project at issue might lead to the construction or increased use of a separate project—for example, a housing development that might someday be built near a highway—the agency need not consider the environmental effects of that separate project.”
As to those separate projects, the Court also held, even if they somehow fell within the ambit of impacts of the railway, “agencies are not required to analyze the effects of projects over which they do not exercise regulatory authority.”
Based on this more limited review, the EIS passed muster under NEPA, and the Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings.
Takeaways
The Supreme Court’s decision underscores the substantial deference courts owe to agencies in their conduct of environmental review under NEPA, and it sets narrow limits on the scope of impacts agencies are required to evaluate. Further, as explained in the decision, it is also a reminder that NEPA is not to be used as a tool to air policy objections to proposed federal actions.
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