Supreme Court to decide climate studies required by federal law for infrastructure projects

The Supreme Court will take up a legal battle next term over how climate change studies can block construction projects.

A coalition got approval to build the Uinta Basin Railway, an 88-mile rail line in Utah to help transport crude oil but a group of environmental activists sued, saying local authorities should have required more studies including an environmental impact analysis.

The D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the activists, prompting the coalition to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.

The issue brings to light a split among federal courts in how to interpret a 2004 case, Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen. In that ruling, the court said an agency doesn’t need to study an environmental effect if it is outside of its regulatory control.

Some federal courts have held that under the National Environmental Policy Act, agencies can limit the review of environmental impacts only to areas where they have regulatory authority and responsibility.

But the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia has taken a more expansive view, saying the board must have studied the impact of drilling and transporting more oil along the route, which spans thousands of miles from the Gulf Coast.

“By requiring an agency to consider any environmental effect that it has the power to prevent, no matter the limits of its regulatory authority, the D.C. Circuit’s rule turns each agency into a ‘de facto environmental-policy czar,’” the coalition argued in its petition.

It took at least four justices to vote in favor of hearing the dispute.

Meanwhile, the environmental advocates led by Eagle County, Colorado, urged the justices not to take up the case. They said there is no real circuit split, and courts have just come out different ways on the climate studies requirements for each project.

“The cases sometimes hold that agencies must consider certain environmental effects, and sometimes hold that other agencies need not do so,” they argued. “But that reflects only that courts carefully apply Public Citizen [precedent] to the distinct statutory authorizations and environmental effects at issue in each case before them.”

The critics argue the effects on wildlife, climate and land should have been studied from drilling and transporting the oil through the Colorado mountains and river.