ATTORNEY GENERAL WRIGLEY APPLAUDS NEPA DECISION

04 Feb ATTORNEY GENERAL WRIGLEY APPLAUDS NEPA DECISION

February 4, 2025

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North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley applauds the North Dakota District Court for its decision invalidating the Biden Administration’s NEPA Rule. In that challenged Rule, the Biden Administration sought to fundamentally change the NEPA review process for all projects with a federal nexus, injecting policy considerations like “environmental justice” into a review process that has been purely procedural since it was created in the 1970s.

North Dakota, Iowa, and 19 other States sued the Biden Administration this summer over the rule change, filing their complaint in the District of North Dakota. The Court’s decision vacates the Rule nationwide, finding that numerous aspects of the Rule exceeded the Center for Environmental Quality’s authority and were arbitrary and capricious.

Significantly, the Court also agreed with the States that the Center for Environmental Quality lacks rulemaking authority in the first place. As the Court held: “for the past forty years all three branches of government operated under the erroneous assumption that CEQ had authority. But now everyone knows the state of the emperor’s clothing and it is something we cannot unsee.”

“This decision is great for North Dakota, but also great for economic and infrastructure development around the entire country,” said Attorney General Wrigley. “The last Administration’s attempt to weaponize and politicize the entire federal bureaucracy in order to push a partisan agenda was truly astounding. Mandating that all federal agencies needed to consider ‘environmental justice’ and global climate effects when deciding whether to grant a permit to build a bridge was only the tip of the iceberg with everything that was both unlawful and unwise about this Rule. I applaud the District Court for seeing the Rule for what it was, and also for recognizing that agencies cannot promulgate rules when Congress has never actually given them any rulemaking authority.”

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The Order Regarding All Motions For Summary Judgment and Partial Summary Judgment is attached.