4 days ago
The Supreme Court Got the Environmental Policy Act Case Right
There's an old Hollywood joke where a screenwriter goes to pitch a romantic comedy, and the producer listens in silence, then exclaims, 'Sounds great! Throw in a couple of car chases, and you've got a movie!' The joke has endless variants: the screenwriter is pitching a zombie thriller, or a period biopic — whatever the writer pitches, the producer's punch line remains the same.
That humoresque comes to mind in light of Thursday's decision by the US Supreme Court in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, which is being described, correctly, as sharply circumscribing the ability of litigants to use the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to stack new review requirements on projects already approved by federal agencies. Because if you ask anybody who's trying to build, say, new infrastructure to support the power needs of AI — or just the growth of the digital world generally — the worry isn't having to get agency approval to break ground. It's all those car chases that the courts might insist they've got to add in before they've 'got a movie.'
