On May 29, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the case of Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, No. 23-975. The Court ruled that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) provides federal agencies with significant discretion when evaluating environmental impacts of proposed projects and does not mandate that agencies consider the effects of separate projects that may result from the proposed project.
Under NEPA, federal agencies must prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) for certain infrastructure projects that are constructed, funded, or approved by the Federal Government. This statute requires agencies to report on the environmental consequences of a “proposed action” and possible alternatives but does not dictate how these consequences should be weighed.
The case involved seven Utah counties requesting approval from the U.S. Surface Transportation Board for a railroad project intended to link Utah’s oil-rich Uinta Basin with the national rail network. The Board produced a comprehensive 3,600-page EIS and ultimately approved the project after analyzing its potential impacts on local wetlands, land use, and recreation. While acknowledging that railroad approval could lead to increased upstream oil drilling in the Uinta Basin and downstream crude oil refining elsewhere in the country, it did not thoroughly examine those activities’ environmental effects.
The D.C. Circuit previously vacated both the Board’s EIS and its approval of the railroad project, arguing that a thorough analysis of all environmental impacts was required under NEPA, particularly concerning increased oil drilling and refining as foreseeable consequences of the railway.
The Supreme Court reversed this decision, emphasizing NEPA’s role as a procedural statute that allows courts to grant agencies “substantial deference” regarding an EIS’s scope and content. The Court clarified that NEPA obliges agencies to concentrate on the “proposed action” without assessing future or geographically distinct projects’ environmental impacts resulting from it. Therefore, it was determined that the Board was not required to evaluate potential drilling or refining activities’ environmental effects since these fall under other agencies’ regulatory jurisdiction.
Justice Kavanaugh delivered the majority opinion with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, and Barrett joining; Justice Alito concurred in part. Justice Sotomayor filed an opinion concurring in judgment joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. Justice Gorsuch did not participate in this case.
