U.S. Supreme Court Issues Ruling Regarding Scope of Environmental Reviews - Articles

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U.S. Supreme Court Issues Ruling Regarding Scope of Environmental Reviews

Posted by: Jarod Word on Jun 4, 2025

The U.S. Supreme Court last week unanimously ruled that a federal agency that regulates rail transportation had properly considered the environmental impact of a proposed 88-mile railway in Utah. The Surface Transportation Board of the U.S. approved the project in 2021 after a review concluded with a 3,600-page report. Environmental groups and a Colorado county sued, saying the report did not consider ways in which the railway could do harm to the environment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled for the challengers, saying the agency had not considered all the “reasonably foreseeable” results of the project. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh penned the opinion saying that many lower courts had found the environmental impact statements required by the National Environmental Policy Act to be needlessly elaborate. “The goal of the law is to inform agency decision making, not to paralyze it,” said Kavanaugh. The railway would connect oil fields in northeast Utah to a rail network that runs next to the Colorado River and then to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The New York Times has more.