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On May 29, 2025, the Supreme Court added another chapter to its evolving project of administrative law reform—this time turning its attention to federal environmental permitting. In Seven County Infrastructure Coalition et al v. Eagle County, Colorado et al, the justices ventured into the thicket of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a statute long celebrated for its environmental ideals but criticized for its procedural backlog.
Seven County marks the Court’s most significant intervention in NEPA jurisprudence in years. With a tone of impatience toward bureaucratic hurdles, the majority opinion brings NEPA “back in line with the statutory text and common sense.” Casting NEPA as a procedural guardrail, rather than a substantive hurdle, the Court declared that the statute is meant to “inform agency decision making, not paralyze it.” In doing so, Seven County may not uproot NEPA, but it takes a judicial axe to some of the thicker branches that have tangled the permitting process for decades.
The Legislative Acorn
NEPA grew out of the 1960s environmental movement. Signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970, the statute requires federal agencies to prepare an “environmental impact statement” (EIS) identifying the significant environmental effects of certain infrastructure projects.
Among other requirements, NEPA directs agencies to consider both the direct and indirect effects of a proposed action. Direct effects stem immediately from the project itself—such as the destruction of habitat to build a new railway. Indirect effects, by contrast, are one step removed: they may be causally linked to the project but typically arise from separate or subsequent activities, like increased oil drilling made more viable by the construction of a rail line. This distinction has generated a disproportionate share of NEPA litigation.
As the Court notes in Seven County, agencies have become weary of potential lawsuits based on the alleged failure to account for indirect impacts. In response, they often overcompensate with sprawling environmental reviews that can take four years or more to complete. What began as a tool to ensure informed decision-making has evolved into a procedural gauntlet.
NEPA was intended to ensure that the “public are aware” of environmental consequences of agency actions. While it has accomplished that goal, decades of judicial interpretation has turned this “legislative acorn” into a “judicial oak” that hinders infrastructure development. It is within this forest of bureaucratic entanglement that the Supreme Court stepped in to cull this judicial overgrowth.
Seven County
In December of 2021, the United States Surface Transportation Board (Board) approved a proposal from Seven County Infrastructure Coalition to build an 85-mile rail line in Utah. This railroad would connect parts of Utah’s oil-rich Uinta Basin to the national railroad network for the primary purpose of facilitating the transportation of crude oil from Utah down to refineries along the Gulf Coast.
The Board prepared an EIS which detailed numerous significant and adverse environmental impacts resulting from the railway’s construction and operation. The EIS considered several direct effects on wetlands, land use, air pollution, and big-game movement.
However, the EIS only partially considered the possible indirect effects of future increases in upstream oil production as a result of the expanded railway. The Board justified this limited analysis by pointing out that those effects would be the result of “separate, independent projects” and they were outside of its regulatory authority. Justifications that the DC Circuit did not agree with, so it vacated the Board’s decision.
The Supreme Court reversed holding that the lower court “failed to afford the Board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases” and incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the USTB to consider the effects of projects separate in “time or place from the Unita Basin.”
Justice Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, states that “NEPA imposes no substantive constraints on” an agency’s final decision to approve a proposed project. When an agency is producing an EIS, it is not interpreting a statute. If it were, then little deference would be given to it. Instead, the lack of substantive constraints imposed by NEPA leaves a court’s “only role” as confirming “that the agency has addressed the environmental consequences” of the project.
Continuing to chop at the judicial oak tree, Justice Kavanaugh proclaims that agencies are not required to consider the indirect environmental impacts of related but separately regulated projects. This is especially true when the agency has no jurisdiction over those projects.
Even when an agency’s EIS falls short or misses the mark, the majority opinion makes clear that NEPA does not mandate an agency’s decision to be vacated. Absent a serious flaw, an agency’s decision should be left intact.
The Court’s decision was 8-0 in judgment (Justice Gorsuch recused), Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a concurrence that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her concurrence would have limited the majorities reasoning to agencies with similarly restricted statutes as the Board’s.
Pruning the Oak, Not Uprooting it
Seven County did not completely fell the NEPA oak tree, but it has certainly lopped off a few branches. The decision signals a judicial desire to restrain NEPA’s procedural sprawl without overturning its foundational roots. Justice Kavanaugh’s majority opinion underscores that NEPA is not a substantive environmental statute but a procedural one. By reining in the scope of “indirect effects” and emphasizing agency deference, the Court has shifted the balance in favor of streamlined approvals.
Developers will likely benefit from the Court’s narrowed interpretation. Agencies may now feel emboldened to draw tighter lines around what they must consider, particularly regarding downstream or upstream effects beyond their jurisdiction. While litigants hoping to challenge a project through NEPA could find less success in doing so.
Still, Seven County is not a total retreat from environmental oversight. Agencies remain obligated to take a “hard look” at the environmental effects of their projects, and judicial review, while more deferential, has not been extinguished. In this way, NEPA remains alive, though perhaps more pruned and less entangled in speculative causation.