The Supreme Court narrowed federal judicial scrutiny of environmental reviews by federal agencies, ruling Thursday that courts should defer to agency decisions about the scope and content of statements on the environmental effects of a project.
The decision also finds that while those agency impact statements need to address the environmental effects of the project at hand, the statements do not have to consider the effects of separate projects.
The court’s majority, in an opinion written by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, found that an appellate court did not provide the U. S. Surface Transportation Board with “substantial judicial deference” in a case tied to the approval of an 88-mile stretch of railroad line in Utah.
