Seven County Infrastructure Coalition et Al. V. Eagle County, Colorado, et Al.,
No. 23-975, decided (U.S. Supreme Ct., May 29, 2025) (Kavanaugh, J.)
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH
Delivered the opinion of the Court. Some 55 years ago, Congress passed and President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA. For certain infrastructure projects that are built, funded, or approved by the Federal Government, NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare an environmental impact statement, or EIS. The EIS must address the significant environmental effects of a proposed project and identify feasible alternatives that could mitigate those effects. NEPA was the first of several landmark environmental laws enacted by Congress in the 1970s. Subsequent statutes included the Clean Air Amendments of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, among others. Unlike those later-enacted laws, however, NEPA imposes no substantive environmental obligations or restrictions. NEPA is a purely procedural statute that, as relevant here, simply requires an agency to prepare an EIS—in essence, a report. Importantly, NEPA does not require the agency to weigh environmental consequences in any particular way. Rather, an agency may weigh environmental consequences as the agency reasonably sees fit under its governing statute and any relevant substantive environmental laws. Simply stated, NEPA is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock. The goal of the law is to inform agency decision making, not to paralyze it. In this case, the U. S. Surface Transportation Board considered a proposal by a group of seven Utah counties for the construction and operation of an approximately 88-mile railroad line in northeastern Utah. Under federal law, the Board determines whether to approve construction of new railroad lines. The railroad line here would connect Utah’s oil-rich Uinta Basin—a rural territory roughly the size of the State of Maryland—to the national rail network. By doing so, the new railroad line would facilitate the transportation of crude oil from Utah to refineries in Louisiana, Texas, and elsewhere. And the project would bring significant economic development and jobs to the isolated Uinta Basin by better connecting the Basin to the national economy. For that proposed 88-mile Utah railroad line, the Board prepared an extraordinarily lengthy EIS, spanning more than 3,600 pages of environmental analysis. The Board’s EIS addressed the environmental effects of the railroad line. But the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit nonetheless faulted the EIS for not sufficiently considering the environmental effects of projects separate from the railroad line itself—primarily, the environmental effects that could ensue from (i) increased oil drilling upstream in the Uinta Basin and (ii) increased oil refining downstream along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas. On that basis, the D. C. Circuit vacated the Board’s EIS and the Board’s approval of the 88-mile railroad line. As a result, construction still has not begun even though the Board approved the project back in December 2021. We reverse. First, the D. C. Circuit did not afford the Board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases. Second, the D. C. Circuit ordered the Board to address the environmental effects of projects separate in time or place from the construction and operation of the railroad line. But NEPA requires agencies to focus on the environmental effects of the project at issue. Under NEPA, the Board’s EIS 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. And the Board’s EIS did so.
In deciding cases involving the American economy, courts should strive, where possible, for clarity and predictability. Some courts’ NEPA decisions have fallen short of that objective. The proper judicial approach for NEPA cases is straightforward: Courts should review an agency’s EIS to check that it addresses the environmental effects of the project at hand. The EIS need not address the effects of separate projects. In conducting that review, courts should afford substantial deference to the agency as to the scope and contents of the EIS.
Plaintiffs’ policy objections to this 88-mile Utah railroad may or may not be persuasive. But neither “the language nor the history of NEPA suggests that it was intended to give citizens a general opportunity to air their policy objections to proposed federal actions. The political process, and not NEPA, provides the appropriate forum in which to air policy disagreements.” Metropolitan Edison, 460 U. S., at 777, 103 S. Ct. 1556, 75 L. Ed. 2d 534. Citizens may not enlist the federal courts, “under the guise of judicial review” of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand. Vermont Yankee, 435 U. S., at 558, 98 S. Ct. 1197, 55 L. Ed. 2d 460.
We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. JUSTICE GORSUCH took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, concurring in the judgment.
