Environmental Groups Lose Appeal Over Trump Era NEPA Review Rule

Wild Virginia and 16 other environmental preservation organizations lost their bid to revive their challenge to a 2020 rule governing how federal agencies conduct reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act.

The rule included changes such as eliminating a requirement that cumulative effects be considered in NEPA analyses and new time and page limits on environmental impact statements.

Whatever the “wisdom of those policy changes,” the court has “no license to consider the merits of the challenge to the rulemaking,” the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said Thursday.

The challenged rule, which was promulgated under the Trump ...