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Measuring The Nepa Litigation Burden: A Review Of 1,499 Federal Court Cases, John C. Ruple, Kayla Race

Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment publications

We reviewed thirteen years of National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) litigation data summarizing 1,499 federal court opinions to assess:

(1) How frequently NEPA compliance efforts result in litigation;

(2) how agency NEPA decisions fare in court; and

(3) how NEPA litigation outcomes compare to outcomes in other challenges to federal agency decisions.

We found that only one in 450 NEPA decisions were litigated and that the rate of NEPA challenges declined during the thirteen-year study period. We noted an inverse relationship between the amount of time spent on Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) preparation and the likelihood that an EIS would …