A bedrock environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), is under attack by the Trump administration and being eroded by the courts. Food & Water Watch is stepping up to defend this crucial law. And we’re challenging federal government actions that benefit corporate polluters at the expense of people and the planet, as we have for the past 20 years.

Congress passed NEPA in 1970 during a time of growing environmental consciousness and public concern, driven by environmental disasters like the Cuyahoga River fire and the Santa Barbara oil spill.

Under the law, federal agencies must consider the environmental impacts of their actions and consider alternatives that might be less harmful. It’s an important tool for government accountability in major decisions, such as granting federal permits to a pipeline project or leasing federal lands to oil drillers.

But now, the Trump administration is attacking NEPA — a gift to corporate polluters nationwide. He’s directed federal agencies to roll back their NEPA regulations, curtail public participation, and ignore climate change and environmental justice. Gutting NEPA will keep us in the dark and allow more polluting projects to break ground without needed guardrails.

NEPA Gives Us a Power Tool to Hold Agencies Accountable for Passing Harmful Projects

The process that NEPA lays out for informed and transparent decision-making is meant to drive better, more environmentally sustainable government actions. It requires agencies to “look before they leap” by requiring them to research and assess a project’s potential impact. Robust implementation of NEPA — including considerations of climate change and environmental justice — make way for better decisions that protect our climate and our communities.

There are three levels of NEPA review: a categorical exclusion for actions that will not have significant impacts, an environmental assessment for actions that might or might not have significant impacts, and a more detailed environmental impact statement for actions that will have significant impacts. Actions that require an environmental impact statement are typically the most complex and expensive and come with the greatest potential for negative environmental consequences.

Before NEPA, the federal government didn’t have to weigh the environmental impacts of its projects. The law made health and environmental harms a required consideration in federal decision-making. It’s brought local communities — who have the most to gain or lose with major projects — to the table in the decision-making process. It’s given room for people to stop dangerous projects in their communities. And it’s ensured the public has more information about these projects’ potential harms to our air, water, and health. 

Trump Guts Decades Worth of NEPA Rulemaking

Besides requiring environmental reviews, NEPA also created the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), a White House office that instructs agencies on how to follow NEPA and assesses whether the federal government is achieving the nation’s environmental policies.

CEQ regulations have guided the NEPA process for decades. Dozens of federal agencies had to, at a minimum, follow the same rules when taking actions that require NEPA review. Those regulations remained the same through Republican and Democratic administrations, until Trump.

During his first administration, Trump issued an executive order directing CEQ to streamline and accelerate the NEPA review process. Then, in 2020, his CEQ weakened the law further. It passed new rules that expanded the use of categorical exclusions and exempted large swaths of projects from any review. Moreover, it restricted public participation and removed the requirement for agencies to consider a decision’s cumulative effects. It even instituted time and page limits on the NEPA projects.

President Biden restored and expanded NEPA regulations, expressly requiring agencies to consider the climate change and environmental justice impacts. We supported the new regulations and submitted public comments to advocate for their approval. Then, after the Biden CEQ finalized the rules, a group of oil and gas industry-friendly states challenged them in court. We quickly intervened to defend them. 

Now, however, we’re seeing even worse rollbacks. In response to an Executive Order, Trump’s CEQ revoked all of the decades-worth of prior regulations. Agencies have begun rescinding and weakening their own NEPA regulations, too.

Many of these actions replace enforceable regulations with non-binding guidance, curtail public participation, and ignore climate change and environmental justice. These moves help clear the way for Trump to ram through his agenda to put polluters over people.

Courts Erode NEPA Environmental Reviews

While we defended the Biden administration’s NEPA rules in court, the D.C. Circuit Court attacked CEQ’s authority to make regulations at all. In a lawsuit brought by conservative states challenging those Biden NEPA rules, the court tossed out decades of CEQ rulemaking, even though that wasn’t at issue in the case. 

Then, in our case Iowa v. Council on Environmental Quality, the North Dakota District Court followed suit. It found that CEQ lacked the authority to issue binding regulations, striking down the Biden administration rules. These decisions became the foundation for Trump’s terrible rollbacks this year.

And that’s not all. Recently, the Supreme Court downsized the requirements of the NEPA process, giving polluting projects freer rein. In its decision on Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, the Court emphasized that agencies have substantial discretion in determining what to include — or, importantly, what not to include — in an environmental impact statement. 

Under this ruling, agencies don’t have to consider much. For instance, in the Seven County case, the project at issue was a railroad that would transport crude oil. The Court ruled that the agency didn’t have to consider the so-called upstream effects of the rail project, such as more oil drilling, or downstream effects, like the greenhouse gas emissions from oil refinement and end use.

But it’s not all doom and gloom in the courts. Despite these setbacks, NEPA has persevered. To fight the construction of a Florida immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Miccosukee Tribe and environmental groups sued under NEPA and halted progress on the detention site. 

The judge ordered the government to stop bringing new detainees to the site and deconstruct the facility within 60 days. And while the case and the injunction that ordered the wind-down remain on hold as it’s being appealed, this case demonstrates how NEPA remains a powerful tool to challenge dangerous projects.

Food & Water Watch is Defending Communities, the Climate, and NEPA

Though NEPA is under attack, we are committed to continuing to defend it in any way we can. In the future, Congress must pass legislation to restore NEPA and undo the damage done by the Trump administration and the courts. 

In the meantime, we’re looking for ways to counter agencies’ NEPA rollbacks. Crucially, Trump’s attack on NEPA doesn’t force agencies to weaken their assessments. It only lowers the bar for what they must do to comply with the law. Agencies can and must use their discretion to consider the full scope of environmental effects when reviewing a project, rather than defer to Trump’s bare minimum. 

While the current attacks on NEPA don’t doom our work, other tools in the toolbox, like other federal and state permit processes, are more important now than ever. Food & Water Watch has long fought for accountability for polluting projects and harmful government actions — whether that’s by defending NEPA, advocating for stronger regulations, or taking agencies to court.

We’ll continue to do so at every level of government and no matter who’s in the White House. Together, we can protect the environment and our hard-fought environmental gains.