Overview

• Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that NEPA serves as a procedural cross-check allowing agencies broad discretion to define their scope without addressing separate projects’ impacts.
• The court’s unanimous 8-0 decision overturns the D.C. Circuit’s 2023 ruling and reinstates the Surface Transportation Board’s approval of the 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway.
• Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred in the judgment, stressing agencies should analyze only those impacts they are empowered to regulate.
• Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself after scrutiny over past legal ties to billionaire Philip Anschutz, whose oil interests stand to benefit from the railway.
• Environmental groups and Eagle County had challenged the project’s EIS for omitting broader oil production and refining consequences, warning the decision could narrow future infrastructure oversight.