The U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision, on May 29, 2025, narrowing the scope of environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, the Court reversed in part the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ finding that the Surface Transportation Board (Board) violated NEPA in authorizing an 88-mile rail line intended to transport waxy crude oil out of Utah’s Uinta Basin. Kaplan Kirsch LLP represents Eagle County in the litigation.
The central issue before the Court was the longstanding “indirect effects” requirement that came from the Council on Environmental Quality regulations under NEPA, which mandates an agency evaluate a project’s environmental effects that are reasonably foreseeable but occur later in time or distance from the project before an agency. The Court held that the D.C. Circuit erred in holding that NEPA required the Board consider the effects of oil production in the Uinta Basin and of increased oil refining along the Gulf Coast, which would be facilitated by the new rail line. The Court also held that the D.C. Circuit failed to afford the Board the “substantial deference” NEPA requires regarding the nature and scope of effects an agency considers in its environmental review.
Writing for the Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that “NEPA requires agencies to focus on the environmental effects of the project at issue.” Under NEPA, the Board’s environmental impact statement “did not need to address the environmental effects of upstream oil drilling or downstream oil refining. Rather, it needed to address only the effects of the 88-mile railroad line.” The Court’s decision establishes a new legal standard under NEPA: an agency “may decline to evaluate environmental effects from separate projects upstream or downstream from the project at issue.” Underlying its decision was the Court’s conclusion that “NEPA has transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents . . . to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects.”
The Court’s decision may significantly narrow the scope of an agency’s environmental review, especially reviews of large transportation, rail, and infrastructure projects that—due to their nature and scope—have far reaching effects beyond the actual geographic limits of a project’s construction. Citing specific projects such as those for airports and highways, the Court reversed NEPA’s decades-old requirement that project proponents consider indirect effects such as induced residential or business development. Those indirect effects may no longer need to be evaluated under NEPA. According to the Court, “if the project at issue might lead to the construction or increased use of a separate project . . . , the agency need not consider the environmental effects of that separate project.”
The Supreme Court did not disturb a majority of the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that the Board violated NEPA, the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act, Endangered Species Act, and Administrative Procedure Act. Among the issues left untouched were the D.C. Circuit’s finding that the Board failed to consider the effects of trains that would use the project transporting millions of gallons of oil through Colorado, including rail accidents along the Colorado River and the risk of wildfire posed by long heavy oil trains. The Board’s other NEPA violations, as well as violations of its own rail statute and the Endangered Species Act, were not raised in the petition before the Supreme Court. The case has been remanded to the D.C. Circuit where the lower court must determine what impact the new NEPA standard has on its original decision to vacate the rail project.
If you have questions or wish to discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling and how this decision may impact environmental reviews under NEPA, please contact Nate Hunt, John Putnam, Allison Fultz, Catherine van Heuven, or Christian Alexander.