A unanimous Supreme Court, with one justice recused, ruled Thursday that the 1970 environmental law often used to stymie or slow down infrastructure and housing development does not require review documents that take into account secondary and tertiary effects of a project on other businesses.

In a ruling that could have broad impacts on all kinds of development and construction projects across the country, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 Thursday that a project sponsor's environmental impact report need not take into account every foreseeable downstream effect of a project that is separate from the impacts of the project itself. The ruling, in the case Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle Country, Colorado found that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals had gone too far in favoring the challengers of an 88-mile railway project that would link the oil-rich Uinta Basin to the national railroad network.

The project sponsors produced a 3,600-page environmental impact statement which the plaintiffs in the case, a coalition of environmental groups, deemed inadequate because, in part, it failed to account for the increase in oil production that would be spurred by the rail line, and the impacts of that. The groups further contended that the report failed to address the possibility of wildfires caused by railway sparks, or potential oil spills.

The report had originally been approved by the federal Surface Transportation Board in 2021, leading to a court challenge.

As the New York Times reports, the high court's ruling, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, limits the scope of the 1970 National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and alleviates some of the burden when it comes to getting environmental impact documents accepted by state and county boards.

"The goal of the law, is to inform agency decision making, not to paralyze it," Kavanaugh writes. And the ruling states, "NEPA does not allow courts, 'under the guise of judicial review' of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand."

The decision finds that project sponsors need not address all the upstream influences and downstream consequences of a project, but merely the direct environmental impacts of the project at hand, so that an agency may make an informed decision to approve or disapprove that project.

Kavanaugh was joined in the opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. The three liberals on the court joined a concurring opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor which made a more narrow ruling. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who hails from Colorado, had previously worked as an attorney for billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, whose companies stand to benefit from the rail project at the center of the case, and he recused himself.

Kavanaugh also broadly criticized the ways in which NEPA has been used to stymie development. "A 1970 legislative acorn has grown over the years into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development," Kavanaugh writes. "Fewer projects make it to the finish line... that in turn means fewer and more expensive railroads, airports, wind turbines, transmission lines, dams, housing developments, highways, bridges, subways, stadiums, arenas, data centers and the like."

In a statement that is certainly being cheered by Bay Area developers, he also adds that multi-thousand-page environmental impact reports have been used by "project opponents (who may not always be entirely motivated by concern for the environment) to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects."

"In deciding cases involving the American economy, courts should strive, where possible, for clarity and predictability," Kavanaugh also writes. "Some courts’ NEPA decisions have fallen short of that objective."

Sotomayor's concurrence finds that Kavanaugh's opinion "unnecessarily ground[s] its analysis largely in matters of policy." But, Sotmayor writes, "Because NEPA’s central aim is to improve agency decisionmaking, an agency need not consider every conceivable environmental consequence of a proposed federal action. Rather, agencies need only analyze environmental impacts for which their decision would be (at least in part) 'responsible'..."

Environmental groups are decrying the decision, suggesting it could open the door to more harmful development on fragile lands.

"This disastrous decision to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify and people will be less healthy," said Wendy Park, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement, per the Times.

Photo by Jesse Collins