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Court limited environmental reviews in Utah railway ruling

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It reined in EPA power to police water pollution discharge

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Court backed fuel producers in California emissions case

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, July 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court

delivered setbacks to environmental interests in a series of

recent rulings including by further restricting the

Environmental Protection Agency's authority and relaxing

requirements for environmental impact studies for proposed

projects.

While cases involving President Donald Trump's policies on

immigration and other issues captured attention during its

just-completed nine-month term, the court also continued its

years-long trend of narrowing federal protections for the

environment in several rulings that could be a boon for

businesses.

Wendy Park, a lawyer with the Center for Biological

Diversity environmentalist group, said those rulings "dealt huge

blows to the environment and public health and safety."

"We'll all suffer from unhealthier air, less safe water and

more climate warming," Park added.

Park's organization was on the losing side of perhaps the term's

biggest environmental decision, one that involved a proposed

Utah railway intended to transport crude oil. The 8-0 ruling,

authored by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, let federal

agencies scale back their environmental reviews of projects they

regulate, bolstering the project.

The ruling narrowed the scope of environmental obligations

for federal agencies under a 1970 federal law called the

National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, passed by Congress

with the intention of preventing environmental harms that might

result from major projects.

"Depending on how lower courts interpret it, the NEPA case

may pose the greatest threat of a major change in the law,"

University of California, Berkeley, law professor Daniel Farber

said, referring to the court's recent environmental rulings.

"The other decisions continue a process of chipping away at

federal protection of the environment," Farber added. "The big

concern is that these add to a strong trend against

environmental protection in the Supreme Court."

A coalition of seven Utah counties and an infrastructure

investment group have sought to construct an 88-mile (142-km)

railway line in northeastern Utah to connect the sparsely

populated Uinta Basin region to an existing freight rail

network.

The National Environmental Policy Act mandates that agencies

examine the "reasonably foreseeable" effects of a project.

Kavanaugh wrote that agencies need only consider

environmental effects of a project at hand and not the "effects

from potential future projects or from geographically separate

projects." Lower courts must offer agencies "substantial

deference" regarding the scope of these assessments, Kavanaugh

added.

"Agencies approving a pipeline or oil railroad now have more

leeway when it comes to involving and informing communities

about the harms," Park said, "but the court is giving way more

scrutiny to agencies in charge of protecting us from those

harms."

Kavanaugh was joined by four other conservative justices,

while the three liberal justices filed a separate opinion

concurring in the outcome. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not take

part in the case.

University of Minnesota Law School professor James Coleman

said the ruling could mark a turning point after lower courts

for 50 years have used the National Environmental Policy Act "to

raise higher and higher hurdles to new infrastructure." The

ruling, Coleman added, signaled to lower courts that they must

defer to agencies when these agencies exercise discretion given

to them by Congress.

"The court demanded a 'course correction' from lower courts,

highlighting how courts' failure to defer to environmental

reviews conducted by agencies is holding up crucial

infrastructure projects," Coleman said.

"It remains to be seen whether the lower courts will accept

this course correction," Coleman added.

REINING IN THE EPA

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority,

has taken a skeptical view toward broad authority for federal

regulatory agencies and has restricted the powers of the EPA in

some important rulings in recent years.

In 2024, it blocked the EPA's "Good Neighbor" rule aimed at

reducing ozone emissions that may worsen air pollution in

neighboring states. In 2023, it hobbled the EPA's power

to protect wetlands and fight water pollution. In 2022, it

imposed limits on the EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act

anti-pollution law to reduce coal- and gas-fired power

plant carbon emissions.

The court hemmed in the agency again in March in a case

involving an EPA-issued permit for a wastewater treatment

facility owned by the city of San Francisco that empties into

the Pacific Ocean. The city had sued to challenge certain

restrictions the EPA included in the permit.

The 5-4 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Samuel

Alito, found that the EPA had exceeded its authority under the

Clean Water Act anti-pollution law by imposing overly vague

requirements on permit-holders related to water quality

standards in the receiving body of water. Conservative Justice

Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberal justices dissented.

Howard University School of Law professor Carlton Waterhouse

said the ruling stripped the EPA of an effective mechanism

commonly used to restrict the discharge of pollutants into

federally regulated waters at the level needed for such waters

to meet their designated use.

"The court dealt a major setback to the EPA and all of us

who need clean water," Waterhouse said. "For example, under the

ruling, the EPA lost an important tool used to make sure that

fishable and swimmable waters remain clean enough for those

activities to continue."

Waterhouse, who was an EPA official during Democratic

President Joe Biden's administration, said some parts of the

United States could experience diminished water quality while a

workaround is devised "to protect state water quality standards

without a major tool they have used for decades."

In June, the justices in a 7-2 ruling authored by Kavanaugh

sided with fuel producers that had opposed California's

standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a

federal air pollution law, agreeing that their legal challenge

to the mandates should not have been dismissed.

The ruling overturned a lower court's decision to throw out

the lawsuit by a Valero Energy ( VLO ) subsidiary and fuel

industry groups. The lower court had concluded that the

plaintiffs lacked the required legal standing to challenge a

Biden-era EPA decision to let California set its own

regulations.

"Allowing these parties into the litigation is not

surprising," Waterhouse said. "The court has a history of

expanding standing for businesses."