Mario Loyola
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court hears Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, a case that could help decide the fate of vital energy infrastructure projects. At issue is whether the Surface Transportation Board (STB) should have assessed climate impacts when authorizing an 87-mile railway meant to connect Utah’s waxy crude oil to the national rail network and on to Gulf Coast refineries.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to study potentially significant environmental impacts of federal permits for infrastructure projects. The Court will decide whether this obligation extends to “upstream” and “downstream” impacts—such as climate effects—beyond the agency’s jurisdiction and expertise.
In 2004, the Court ruled in Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen that agencies need not study impacts that they lack statutory authority to prevent. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Public Citizen doesn’t apply here, because the STB’s discretion to assess whether a railway serves the “public interest” is broad and includes mitigating climate change.
The Court’s Obscenity Jurisprudence Is Due for Revision
The Supreme Court has previously clarified that the “public interest” standard is not a license to address general societal goals. In 1976, the Court held in NAACP v. FPC that “public interest” must derive meaning from the specific purpose of the legislation, which for the STB is adequate rail transport, not climate policy.
The case represents the flip side of the Court’s decision to jettison “Chevron deference” to agency interpretations of statutes earlier this year. If deciding questions of law is the province of courts under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), technical and policy judgments are the competence of administrative agencies—so long as they are acting within their jurisdiction and expertise.
The D.C. Circuit casually dismissed that consideration, substituting its judgment for the STB’s as to matters at the very heart of the agency’s jurisdiction and expertise—immediate economic impact, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/seven-county-infrastructure-coalition-v-eagle-county-whats-stake-the-supreme