In late May 2025, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Seven Cty. Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle Cty., No. 23-975 (2025), a lawsuit concerning the scope of review under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”). In its decision, the Court determined that when conducting a NEPA review, federal agencies are only required to consider the environmental impacts of projects or actions over which the agency has regulatory authority. Additionally, the Supreme Court found that when considering whether an agency’s NEPA report complies with the law, reviewing courts should grant “substantial deference” to the agency. The decision is likely to impact how courts rule on challenges to NEPA reports going forward.
National Environmental Policy Act
NEPA was signed into law on January 1, 1970. According to the text of the act, the primary purpose of NEPA is to “declare a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment[.]” 42 U.S.C. § 4321. To achieve this purpose, NEPA requires all federal agencies to publish a “detailed statement” describing the “reasonably foreseeable environmental effects” of their proposed agency actions. 42 U.S.C. § 4332. This detailed statement is known as an Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”). According to NEPA, each EIS must include the following: the environmental impact of the proposed agency action; any adverse environmental effects that cannot be avoided if the actions is carried out as planned; alternatives to the proposed action, including a “no action” alternative; the relationship between local short-term uses of the environment and long-term productivity; and any irreversible commitments of resources which would be made if the proposed action were implemented. 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C). Importantly, NEPA is often described as a procedural statute because although it requires federal agencies to produce EIS reports prior to taking an agency action, it does not require the agency to adopt a specific substantive outcome.
Until recently, the contents of an EIS report were outlined in regulations issued by the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”), the agency tasked with administering NEPA. However, following a series of court rulings from late 2024 and early 2025, CEQ has rescinded all of its NEPA-implementing regulations. More information on that is available here. While those specific regulations are no longer in effect, the EIS report at issue in Seven Cty. Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle Cty. was drafted before those regulations were rescinded and conforms to the rules that were in place at the time. According to those regulations, an agency drafting an EIS must consider direct environmental impacts that occur at the same place and time as the proposed action; indirect effects that will occur at a later time, but are still a reasonably foreseeable result of the action; and cumulative effects which result from the effects of the proposed action when added to the effects of other agency actions in roughly the same area. 40 C.F.R. § 1508.1(i). When a party files a lawsuit to challenge an agency’s EIS report for failing to meet the requirements of NEPA, they often claim that the EIS does not adequately assess the direct, indirect, or cumulative impacts of the proposed action.
Case Background
The plaintiffs in Seven Cty. Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle Cty. initiated the lawsuit in late 2021 to challenge an EIS report that was issued by the United States Surface Transportation Board (“the Board”) for the construction of an 88-mile railroad line in northeastern Utah. According to federal law, the Board is responsible for approving all new railroad construction in the United States. 49 U.S.C. § 10901. In 2020, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, a group of seven Utah counties, petitioned the Board for approval of a new 88-mile railroad line that would connect the Uinta Basin with the interstate rail network. The Uinta Basin contains quantities of crude oil, and the proposed Uinta Basin Railway would allow for a more efficient way to transport oil out of the Basin to refineries located in other parts of the country.
Before approving the project, the Board conducted a NEPA review and in 2021 published its final EIS report. The final EIS was over 3,600 pages long and analyzed various adverse impacts that could occur as a result of the proposed project, including impacts to land use, air quality, wetlands, wildlife and outdoor recreation. The EIS also noted that the Uinta Basin Railway could ultimately lead to increased oil drilling in the Uinta Basin and increased refining of crude oil carried along the railroad. However, the EIS did not fully analyze the environmental impacts of either possibility both because the Board is only responsible for approving railroad projects, not oil and gas drilling or refining, and any effects of future development or oil refining were “speculative” and “attenuated to the matter at hand.”
After the Board issued the EIS and approved the Uinta Basin Railway project, a Colorado county joined by various environmental organizations filed a lawsuit. The plaintiffs in Seven Cty. Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle Cty. claimed that the EIS failed to fully examine the direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts of approving the railroad project. Specifically, the plaintiffs claimed that the Board had failed to fully analyze the environmental impacts of future oil and gas drilling and crude oil refining that could result from the Board’s approval of the Uinta Basin Railway. The plaintiffs filed their case in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals which ultimately ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. The D.C. Circuit agreed with the plaintiffs and concluded that the Board had failed to fully analyze the environmental impacts of future oil drilling and refining. According to the court, the EIS violated NEPA because the Board had failed to fully examine all the “foreseeable impacts” of approving the railroad project. The court overturned the EIS and the Board’s approval of the Uinta Basin Railway. The defendants appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.
The Court’s Decision
In Seven Cty. Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle Cty., the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the EIS, finding first that the D.C. Circuit had failed to grant the Board the “substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases,” and second that NEPA did not require to Board to consider the environmental impacts of “upstream and downstream projects” that are separate in time and place to the Uinta Basin Railway.
At the outset, the Court explained that NEPA is a purely procedural statute which does not “mandate particular results, but simply prescribes the necessary process” for an agency’s environmental review. The Court went on to explain that while federal courts have been reviewing NEPA cases for decades, “confusion and disagreement” had arisen over how to handle NEPA cases, prompting a need for the Court to clarify the role courts should play in reviewing NEPA lawsuits. While the Supreme Court acknowledged that typically, courts interpreting statutory language should do so without taking an agency’s interpretation into account, when an agency is exercising discretion explicitly granted to it by a statute, the proper role of the court is to determine only “whether the agency action was reasonable and reasonably explained.” In a NEPA lawsuit where a plaintiff claims that an agency has acted unreasonably by producing an EIS that does not comply with the law, the Supreme Court stated that a reviewing court must consider that NEPA is a “purely procedural statue.” According to the Court, an agency’s responsibility under NEPA is only to produce an adequate report. Therefore, when a court reviews an agency’s EIS, its only role is to establish that the agency has analyzed the environmental impacts and reasonably alternatives to the agency action. In drafting an EIS, the Supreme Court noted that agency will necessarily make several choices based on relevant facts, context, and policy. Because NEPA is procedural and does not mandate a substantive outcome, the Court concluded that reviewing courts should grant “substantial judicial deference” to the choices an agency makes when drafting an EIS and determine only whether they complied with the procedural requirements of NEPA.
Next, the Supreme Court concluded that the D.C. Circuit had wrongly overturned the Board’s EIS after ruling that the Board should have fully analyzed the environmental impacts of future oil drilling in the Uinta Basin and future oil refining at out-of-state refineries. The Supreme Court noted that the text of NEPA directs agencies to consider the impacts of the “proposed action,” not other, separate actions that could occur in the wake of the immediately proposed action. The Court explained that while NEPA can require agencies to consider the environmental effects of a project that occur outside the geographic area of a project, NEPA does not require an agency to consider the impacts of a separate project. In this case, the Supreme Court concluded that the relevant project was the Uinta Basin Railway. Any future drilling in the Uinta Basin or increased crude oil refining at out-of-state refineries are separate projects that may or may not occur as a result of the Uinta Basin Railway, and are beyond the scope of the Board’s legal responsibilities. For those reasons, the Supreme Court determined that the Board did not need to consider the environmental impacts of upstream oil drilling or downstream oil refining in its EIS. The Court overruled the D.C. Circuit and remanded the case for further proceedings.
Going Forward
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Seven Cty. Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle Cty., future courts tasked with considering NEPA challenges will likely grant greater deference to federal agencies and focus more on whether the agency met the procedural requirements of NEPA, and addressed the environmental impacts of the project at hand. The Court’s decision combined with CEQ’s recent move to rescind its NEPA-implementing regulations earlier this year are likely to result in NEPA reviews that take less time and are easier for agencies to defend in court.
To read the Supreme Court’s decision in Seven Cty. Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle Cty., click here.
To read the text of NEPA, click here.
For more NALC resources on NEPA, click here.