We’re Defending a Bedrock Environmental Law at the Supreme Court

What’s happening: In a case called Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, the Supreme Court will consider whether to limit the extent to which the government is required to consider environmental effects when it decides whether to approve a project. Alongside the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice is defending the principle that the government needs to consider predictable environmental harms before it acts.

Why it matters: This case is part of a broad attack by polluting industries and their political allies seeking to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a federal law that gives the public a voice in environmental decision-making and helps agencies account for the impact of proposed projects.

If these industries get their way, more pipelines, chemical facilities, and other destructive infrastructure could get approved without the federal agencies involved having to consider potentially harmful environmental effects as agencies have for over 50 years. Earthjustice is bringing all our legal expertise to bear to prevent that outcome.

The Facts of the Case

• Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County is about a proposed rail project in Utah that would transport oil from the Uinta Basin to ports and refineries in Texas and Louisiana. The rail line’s backers believe it could cause oil production to increase in the region up to five-fold.
• A coalition of environmental groups, and Eagle County, Colorado, challenged the rail project’s approval in court. They argued that it violated NEPA’s requirement that the federal agency responsible for approving the project must disclose and analyze all reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts.
• In 2023, a federal court threw out the project’s approval. The court found that the federal agency, the Surface Transportation Board, failed to address easily foreseeable harms from increased drilling in the Basin and from increased waxy crude oil refining on the Gulf Coast. The agency also failed to weigh the impact of spills and accidents involving trains, including contaminating the Colorado River.
• A coalition of county governments that wanted the railroad built took the decision to the Supreme Court. The counties are arguing against settled law that requires agencies deciding whether to permit a project to consider predictable environmental harms.

What’s at Stake

• Industry and their allies want the Court to prevent our government from looking before it leaps. Congress wrote NEPA to make sure that government agencies consider the environmental consequences of their decisions before acting. Industries and their allies want the Court to put blinders on those agencies and keep the public in the dark.
• The proposed rail line doesn’t just affect the communities and habitats it would run through. Its construction would mean that trains full of waxy crude oil would travel precariously close to the Colorado River. Burning that oil would worsen climate change and drive dangerous, costly, and deadly weather patterns across the country.
• Earthjustice is in this fight because agencies need to make transparent, well-informed decisions that incorporate concerns from affected communities — as the law requires them to do. NEPA is the way for federal agencies to consider a project’s harm and alternatives that could lessen that harm.