North Dakota Federal Judge Upends Key Environmental Regulations

Late yesterday, a federal judge in North Dakota vacated the Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) regulations that implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Twenty-one Republican attorneys general, led by Iowa and North Dakota, brought the case to invalidate these key rules, which govern environmental review of federally funded or permitted projects. 

The district court rejected the states’ misleading attack on the government’s ability to consider environmental justice and climate change impacts. Instead, its decision focused on an issue that had long been considered settled: Whether CEQ had authority to issue binding rules in the first place. Even though agencies, Congress, and federal courts at every level had long considered CEQ’s rules to be binding, a D.C. appellate court cast doubt on CEQ’s authority to issue rules in a surprise decision in November 2024. 

Yesterday’s decision repeated that finding. The district court ruled that Congress never gave CEQ authority to issue binding regulations — and that the President could not claim such authority through an executive order. By vacating the “Phase II” CEQ regulations, the order essentially reverts NEPA’s implementing regulations to a different set of rules adopted during the first Trump administration.  

 “The court’s ruling will weaken environmental reviews and will further harm communities already struggling with polluted land, air, and water,” said Earthjustice Attorney Jan Hasselman. “But the same standard will have to be applied to the current administration’s efforts to undo decades of environmental progress and strip away critical protections for communities through executive actions.  According to this court decision, many of Trump’s actions are also illegal.” 

The district court decision contained strong language confirming that presidents cannot use executive orders to circumvent the laws that Congress enacts.  President Trump has already issued dozens of executive orders, and taken other actions, that violate this mandate — including several that further weaken NEPA and other environmental laws. The Court wrote:  

“People fought to separate these powers in a new form a government. People died for this new government because they saw what happened when all the power was held in one hand. Power can be taken by force, given, or lost inch by inch. It is the job of Congress to enact the law. It is the job of the President to enforce the law.”   

Additional Background  

NEPA is our nation’s keystone environmental law. It requires agencies to assess the environmental and public health impacts of federal permits, funding, and other actions, and embeds environmental values in federal decision-making. 

In April 2024, the Biden White House Council on Environmental Quality finalized its Phase II regulations. The Phase II regulations replaced a harmful, controversial rewrite adopted by the first Trump administration in 2020. The now-vacated rules required federal agencies to consider climate change and environmental justice impacts in their NEPA analyses, in addition to conducting meaningful upfront consultation with communities, including tribes.  

Attorneys from Earthjustice and Silvix Resources represent Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Environmental Protection Information Center, Food & Water Watch, Fort Berthold POWER, Friends of the Earth, Green Latinos, Labor Council on Latin American Advancement, Mālama Mākua, National Parks Conservation Association, National Wildlife Federation, Ocean Conservancy, Peoples Collective for Environmental Justice, Rio Grande International Study Center, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, The Wilderness Society, and Winter Wildlands Alliance as defendant-intervenors.