## Facts

- Seven County Infrastructure Coalition (a group of seven Utah counties) sought federal approval to construct and operate the “Uinta Basin Railway,” an approximately 88-mile rail line connecting Utah’s Uinta Basin to the national freight rail network to facilitate shipment of crude oil to refineries.
- The Coalition applied to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB) for authority under 49 U.S.C. § 10901.
- Because the STB’s approval was a major federal action, the STB conducted National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review and prepared an environmental impact statement (EIS).
- The STB issued a draft EIS, held multiple public meetings, received extensive public comments, and ultimately published a final EIS of roughly 3,600 pages (2021).
- The EIS evaluated many environmental effects from construction and operation of the rail line in and near the project area, including effects on wetlands, land use, recreation, air quality, wildlife movement, and related local impacts.
- The EIS also discussed, but did not fully analyze, potential “upstream” effects (additional oil production in the Uinta Basin facilitated by added transport capacity) and “downstream” effects (refining and end-use/combustion of the transported oil at distant locations), including estimates of greenhouse-gas emissions under certain assumptions.
- The STB approved the rail line, concluding that the project’s transportation and economic benefits outweighed its environmental impacts.
- Eagle County, Colorado, and environmental organizations petitioned for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, challenging the STB’s NEPA compliance.
- The D.C. Circuit vacated the STB’s approval, holding that the EIS failed to take the required “hard look” at the reasonably foreseeable upstream drilling and downstream refining/use effects.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari (No. 23-975) and reversed and remanded. Justice Kavanaugh wrote the Court’s opinion; Justice Sotomayor concurred in the judgment, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson; Justice Gorsuch took no part.

## Issues

1. Whether NEPA required the STB’s EIS for the Uinta Basin Railway to include detailed analysis of environmental effects from upstream oil development and downstream refining/use activities that are separate from the rail-line project.
2. Whether the D.C. Circuit applied the proper standard of review by giving substantial judicial deference to the STB’s judgments about the scope and contents of the EIS.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the D.C. Circuit and remanded.
- The Court held that NEPA required the STB to assess the environmental effects of the “proposed action” (the rail line) and did not require a full analysis of the environmental effects of separate upstream or downstream activities beyond the STB’s approval.
- The Court held that judicial review in NEPA cases requires substantial deference to an agency’s technical and predictive judgments about what to study and how much detail to provide, and that the D.C. Circuit did not give the STB that deference.
- Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, agreed the D.C. Circuit erred on this record but cautioned against treating the Court’s reasoning as a blanket rule that upstream or downstream effects can never be considered when sufficiently connected to the agency action.

## Legal Principles

- NEPA is procedural: it requires an agency to take a “hard look” at environmental consequences and alternatives for the federal action under review, but it does not mandate a particular outcome.
- The required scope of an EIS centers on the agency’s “proposed action”; NEPA does not require an EIS to provide a full analysis of the effects of other, separate projects that might be economically related to the proposed action.
- Courts must give substantial judicial deference to an agency’s judgments about EIS scope, methodology, and level of detail, including predictive and technical judgments, so long as the agency’s choices are reasonable under NEPA and applicable regulations.
- A reviewing court exceeds its proper role when it effectively demands an EIS trace extended causal chains involving decisions by other actors and other regulators, transforming NEPA review into supervision of policy choices rather than review of the agency’s reasoned explanation.

## Conclusion

*Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County* held that the STB’s NEPA review could reasonably focus on the environmental effects of the rail line the STB was asked to approve, without performing a full EIS-level assessment of separate upstream oil-production and downstream refining/use activity, and it directed lower courts to apply substantial deference to agency judgments about the scope and detail of an EIS.


Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, 605 U.S. 168 (2025)