Or maybe they’re only quoting from Vermont Yankee? Still… from Seven County Infrastructure Coality vs. Eagle County (which we’ve been following, including the involvement of the Ute Tribe).
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“In preparing an EIS, an agency also must determine the scope of the environmental effects that it will address. The textual focus of NEPA is the “proposed action”—that is, the project at hand. 42 U. S. C. §4332(2)(C) (2018). The agency therefore will obviously seek to assess significant effects from the project at issue. But how far will the agency go in considering the indirect effects that might occur outside the area of the immediate project—for example, due to emissions or run off from the project carried elsewhere by air or water? And will the agency evaluate the environmental effects from other future or geographically separate projects that may be initiated (or expanded) as a result of or in the wake of the current project? And what if another agency also possesses regulatory authority over a related project?
In analyzing those scope questions, it is critical to disaggregate the agency’s role from the court’s role. So long as the EIS addresses environmental effects from the project at issue, courts should defer to agencies’ decisions about where to draw the line—including (i) how far to go in considering indirect environmental effects from the project at hand and (ii) whether to analyze environmental effects from other projects separate in time or place from the project at hand. On those kinds of questions, as this Court has often said, agencies possess discretion and must have broad latitude to draw a “manageable line.” Public Citizen, 541 U. S., at 767 (quoting Metropolitan Edison Co. v. People Against Nuclear Energy, 460 U. S. 766, 774, n. 7 (1983)).
To tie all of this together: When assessing significant environmental effects and feasible alternatives for purposes of NEPA, an agency will invariably make a series of fact-dependent, context-specific, and policy-laden choices about the depth and breadth of its inquiry—and also about the length, content, and level of detail of the resulting EIS. Courts should afford substantial deference and should not micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness. As the Court has emphasized on several occasions, and we doubly underscore again today, “inherent in NEPA . . . is a ‘rule of reason,’ which ensures that agencies determine whether and to what extent to prepare an EIS based on the usefulness of any new potential information to the decisionmaking process.” Public Citizen, 541 U. S., at 767. A reviewing court may not “substitute its judgment for that of the agency as to the environmental consequences of its actions.” Kleppe, 427 U. S., at 410, n. 21.
Some courts have strayed and not applied NEPA with the level of deference demanded by the statutory text and this Court’s cases. Those decisions have instead engaged in overly intrusive (and unpredictable) review in NEPA cases. Those rulings have slowed down or blocked many projects and, in turn, caused litigation-averse agencies to take ever more time and to prepare ever longer EISs for future projects.
The upshot: NEPA has transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents (who may not always be entirely motivated by concern for the environment) to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects. Some project opponents have invoked NEPA and sought to enlist the courts in blocking or delaying even those projects that otherwise comply with all relevant substantive environmental laws. Indeed, certain project opponents have relied on NEPA to fight even clean-energy projects—from wind farms to hydroelectric dams, from solar farms to geothermal wells. See, e.g., Brief for Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, et al. as Amici Curiae 19–20.
All of that has led to more agency analysis of separate projects, more consideration of attenuated effects, more exploration of alternatives to proposed agency action, more speculation and consultation and estimation and litigation.
Delay upon delay, so much so that the process sometimes seems to “borde[r] on the Kafkaesque.” Vermont Yankee, 435 U. S., at 557. Fewer projects make it to the finish line. Indeed, fewer projects make it to the starting line. Those that survive often end up costing much more than is anticipated or necessary, both for the agency preparing the EIS and for the builder of the project. And that in turn means fewer and more expensive railroads, airports, wind turbines, transmission lines, dams, housing developments, highways, bridges, subways, stadiums, arenas, data centers, and the like. And that also means fewer jobs, as new projects become difficult to finance and build in a timely fashion.
A 1970 legislative acorn has grown over the years into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development “under the guise” of just a little more process. Id., at 558. A course correction of sorts is appropriate to bring judicial review under NEPA back in line with the statutory text and common sense. Id., at 525. Congress did not design NEPA for judges to hamstring new infrastructure and construction projects. On the contrary, as this Court has stressed, courts should and “must defer to ‘the informed discretion of the responsible federal agencies.’” Marsh, 490 U. S., at 377.
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The ultimate question is not whether an EIS in and of itself is inadequate, but whether the agency’s final decision was reasonable and reasonably explained. Review of an EIS is only one component of that analysis. Even if an EIS falls short in some respects, that deficiency may not necessarily require a court to vacate the agency’s ultimate approval of a project, at least absent reason to believe that the agency might disapprove the project if it added more to the EIS. Cf. 5 U. S. C. §706. For example, in a case like this one, even if the EIS drew the line on the effects of separate upstream or downstream projects too narrowly, that mistake would not necessarily require a court to vacate the agency’s approval of the railroad project. Cf. Vermont Yankee, 435 U. S., at 558.4″
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My italics.
Somewhat surprising that the appellants won 8-0 (Gorsuch recused). But the 3 concurring liberal justices used much narrower reasoning than the majority. The liberals’ approach would have made little (if any) new law in the area, while the majority view will make things significantly harder for at least some NEPA plaintiffs.
NYT’s take is here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/us/politics/supreme-court-environmental-reviews.html
“The question for the justices was whether an agency had complied with a federal law by issuing a 3,600-page report on the impact of a proposed railway in Utah.”
No, that wasn’t really the question (not Liptak’s fault – I blame the headline editor), but it might be interesting to speculate whether STB would have prevailed if they had only performed an EA. Given the majority’s rhetoric, the answer is “probably,” but agencies will for the moment likely be on safer ground if they lean toward an EIS in close cases if the project in question is controversial.
My favorite line was “All of that has led to more agency analysis of separate projects, more consideration of attenuated effects, more exploration of alternatives to proposed agency action, more speculation and consultation and estimation and litigation.”
I don’t think people realize how much court-ordered prognostication, layers of speculation and bizarre modeling exercises ended up in some of these documents.I found it demoralizing to spend taxpayers’ dollars on this stuff.
Not at all surprising that the Court ruled unanimously.
In fact, all of the Supreme Court’s opinions in NEPA cases have been unanimous, e.g., Metropolitan Edison Co. v. People Against Nuclear Energy (1983); Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1983); Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council (1989);
Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen (2004).
I would have highlighted this – “The ultimate question is not whether an EIS in and of itself is inadequate, but whether the agency’s final decision was reasonable and reasonably explained.” That’s the ultimate APA question, but it ignores NEPA, which created a separate question about whether certain effects have been adequately considered and disclosed prior to making the decision. (This then helps define what is arbitrary or capricious for the APA.)
Similarly, “Congress did not design NEPA for judges to hamstring new infrastructure and construction projects.” It absolutely did want agencies to be more thoughtful and deliberate about actions that affect the environment, whether that amounted to a “hamstring” or not.
There has always been a basic principle of NEPA that effects to be considered must be reasonably foreseeable. It seems like the Court could have just said that these weren’t. Or more specifically, the Court could have said it was deferring to the agency’s judgment that these effects were not reasonably foreseeable. Actually they did say that. So did they create a new test, or is just it that they were willing to give “substantial deference” to what the agency thinks NEPA requires? (No mention of Loper Bright here.) Guess I should read the whole opinion.