U.S. Supreme Court Curbs NEPA’s “Indirect Effects” Analysis

Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County

A May 29, 2025 United States Supreme Court ruling has placed new limits on the “indirect effects” analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), and more broadly, can be expected to increase judicial deference to federal agency decision making.

The case arose from a proposed 88-mile rail project in northeastern Utah before the U.S. Surface Transportation Board. The project would deliver crude oil from Utah’s Uinta Basin to the national rail network, where it could be transported to refineries in Louisiana and Texas. The project would foreseeably result in an increase in oil drilling in the Uinta Basin, as well as additional oil refining on the Gulf Coast. The question was whether the Board’s NEPA document needed to analyze these upstream and downstream effects. The District of Columbia Circuit held that NEPA required such an analysis.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed. The Court held that while upstream and downstream effects were factually foreseeable, the “causal chain” was too attenuated to require the Board to review projects “separate in time or place” from the project at hand, particularly given the Board’s lack of regulatory authority over such upstream or downstream projects. “[T]here is no reasonably close causal relationship between the project at hand and the environmental effects of those other projects…”

The Court also stressed the need for judicial deference to federal agency decisions under NEPA. Because NEPA is a purely procedural statute, courts should defer to agencies concerning the scope and level of detail in their NEPA analyses, including the extent that an agency considers the indirect effects of a project. The Court lamented that NEPA “has grown over the years into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development under the guise of a little more process.” As a matter of judicial policy, “courts should and must defer to the informed discretion of the responsible federal agencies.”

The decision is plainly an effort to “course correct” the judiciary on NEPA matters. Time will tell whether the ruling has its intended effect.

by Sean Hungerford a Partner at Harrison, Temblador, Hungerford & Guernsey LLP in Sacramento, California.

© 2025 – Harrison, Temblador, Hungerford & Guernsey LLP. All rights reserved. The information in this article has been prepared by Harrison, Temblador, Hungerford & Guernsey LLP for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.