Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Docket No. 23-975
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The Supreme Court’s decision turns on a fine point of environmental law: when a federal agency studies a project’s effects, it only has to look at the project itself. Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v Eagle County involved an 88-mile railroad line in Utah’s Uinta Basin. The Surface Transportation Board wrote its environmental report on that rail project and chose not to analyze separate oil drilling or refining plans. The Court said that was enough and sent the case back, reversing the lower court.
Under the law at issue—the rule that makes federal agencies study environmental impacts—courts are meant to trust agencies when they stick to the work Congress set out. Agencies don’t have to guess at every possible side project beyond their control.
Summary of the Case
The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition applied to the Surface Transportation Board (STB) in 2020 to build an 88-mile freight railroad from Utah's oil-rich Uinta Basin to the national rail network, thereby easing crude-oil transport to Gulf-Coast refineries. As required by NEPA, the Board prepared a 3,600-page Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) analyzing the line's construction and operation—wetlands, wildlife, noise, air quality, and local land-use effects—but declined to "detailed[ly]" assess two categories of indirect impacts: (1) additional upstream oil drilling in the Basin and (2) increased downstream refining along the Gulf Coast. In December 2021, the Board approved the line, finding its transportation and economic benefits outweighed its environmental costs. Petitioners in the D.C. Circuit—Eagle County and environmental organizations—argued that NEPA's "hard look" mandate required fuller analysis of those foreseeable upstream and downstream effects. The D.C. Circuit agreed, vacating both the EIS and the Board's approval. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether NEPA compels an agency to analyze the environmental impacts of separate projects that are distinct in time, place, or regulatory authority from the "proposed action."
Opinion of the Court
Justice Kavanaugh, writing for a 5-4 majority, reversed. He first reiterated that NEPA is a purely procedural statute: it requires agencies to prepare an adequate EIS but does not prescribe substantive results. Courts reviewing NEPA claims must defer to agencies' fact-intensive judgments—on the scope, detail, and breadth of an EIS—so long as those choices fall within a "broad zone of reasonableness." Under NEPA's text, the focus is the "proposed action," here the 88-mile rail line, not separate upstream wells or downstream refineries. Even if those indirect effects are foreseeable, the causal chain is too attenuated when another agency controls drilling or refining. Moreover, courts must not, "under the guise of judicial review," delay or block projects by importing into NEPA the environmental assessment of unrelated undertakings. The Board's EIS adequately addressed the environmental consequences of the railway itself; it was neither arbitrary nor capricious to omit a second-order inquiry into separate oil-industry projects.
Separate Opinions
Justice Sotomayor concurred in the judgment. She agreed that the Board need not analyze effects of drilling and refining because its organic statute gives it no authority to deny or condition rail approval on those consequences. In her view, the majority's broad deference framework risks understating NEPA's information-forcing purpose; yet this case's outcome follows inexorably from the Board's lack of power over oil development. Justices Kagan and Jackson joined her concurrence.
How Far Does Environmental Review Extend? The Limits of NEPA's Reach
NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for major actions affecting the environment. But there's an important boundary: agencies only need to analyze environmental impacts they have the power to address. The law functions as a transparency tool, making agencies consider environmental concerns before proceeding with projects.
When courts review these environmental statements, they must give substantial deference to agencies' decisions about what to include and at what level of detail. The focus must remain on the specific project being proposed—in this case, the railway itself—not on separate projects that might be connected but are different in time, location, or under different regulatory authority.
This approach maintains NEPA's original purpose: ensuring informed decision-making without allowing judges to substitute their own policy preferences for the expertise and discretion of government agencies. The law requires thorough environmental analysis of the proposed action, but doesn't force agencies to analyze impacts beyond their control or authority to mitigate.