The Supreme Court Issues a Major Course Correction, Limiting The Role of Federal Courts in NEPA Cases

On May 29, 2025, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, limiting the role of federal courts in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) cases. The Court recognized that NEPA – the “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.” This decision marked an explicit “course correction” to “bring judicial review under NEPA back in line with the statutory text and common sense.” The Court made clear that NEPA is merely “a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock. The goal of the law is to inform agency decisionmaking, not to paralyze it.”

The Seven County case involved a proposed railroad line connecting an oil-rich basin in Utah to the national freight rail network. Under NEPA, the Board was required to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) assessing the environmental effects of the proposed project before deciding whether to approve it. The Board prepared a 3,600-page EIS addressing the environmental effects of the railroad line and ultimately approved the project. On review, the D.C. Circuit vacated the Board’s EIS and its approval, concluding that the EIS failed to give sufficient consideration to the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that were separate from the railroad line itself – namely, increased oil drilling and oil refining that would occur as a result of the railroad line being built. The Supreme Court reversed. It held that NEPA did not require the Board to fully analyze 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.” Because the Board’s EIS did so, it satisfied the dictates of NEPA. 

In addition to confirming that NEPA does not demand that an EIS fully analyze all environmental effects from upstream and downstream projects, the Supreme Court’s decision in Seven County yielded several other important takeaways: 

1. Even after the Court’s rejection of Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024), the Court here in Seven County emphatically embraced “substantial deference” for federal agencies in determining the depth and breadth of an EIS under NEPA.
   • The Court explained that “what details need to be included in any given EIS” involves primarily issues of fact that agencies are better equipped to assess.
   • For instance, because an EIS involves predictive and scientific judgments in assessing the relevant impact, agencies “exercise substantial discretion” in identifying significant environmental impacts and feasible alternatives. Those judgments are due “substantial deference.”
   • And when it comes to indirect environmental effects, “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.”
2. The Court also explained that a deficiency in an EIS does not require a reviewing court to vacate a permit or project authorization, “at least absent reason to believe that the agency might disapprove the project if it added more to the EIS.” This statement by the Court should help push back on a growing trend in the D.C. Circuit of ordering vacatur as a remedy.
3. The Court also made clear that NEPA does not require an EIS to provide endless detail or analysis. For instance, it noted:
   • “Brevity should not be mistaken for lack of detail. A relatively brief agency explanation can be reasoned and detailed. A relatively brief agency explanation can be reasoned and detailed; an EIS need not meander on for hundreds or thousands of pages.”
   • “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.”
4. The Court explained that under NEPA, a reviewing court “may not invoke but-for causation or mere foreseeability to order agency analysis of the effects of every project that might somehow or someday follow from the current project.” Thus, an agency preparing an EIS “need not assess the environmental effects of other separate projects simply because those projects (and effects) might not materialize but for the project at hand, or are in some sense foreseeable.”
5. Finally, in an interesting footnote, the Court cast some doubt on “whether Congress … actually intended or anticipated judicial review of agency compliance with NEPA.” Although the Court did not explore that idea further, the Court invoked it apparently to underscore that, “[w]hen reviewing compliance with NEPA, ‘courts are to play only a limited role.’”

Overall, the decision represents a win for companies that are often subject to increasingly onerous NEPA review by agencies and reviewing courts.