Signal Peak Energy, LLC v. Haaland

On July 1, 2025, the owner and operator of Bull Mountains Mine No. 1—an underground coal mine in Montana—and the U.S. Department of the Interior and other defendants stipulated to the dismissal of the owner-operator’s action asserting that the defendants had violated NEPA’s two-year deadline for preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS) in the review of a mining plan modification. The stipulation stated that the Department of Interior had approved use of alternative NEPA procedures on May 12, 2025 and had issued its final EIS and Record of Decision on June 6, 2025. In light of the completion of the NEPA process, the parties stipulated to the dismissal of the case. On July 3, 2025, the federal district court for the District of Columbia dismissed the action without prejudice in light of the parties’ joint stipulation.

The federal district court for the District of Columbia granted in part and denied in part a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the owner and operator of an underground coal mine in Montana alleging that federal defendants violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by setting a schedule for completing an environmental impact statement (EIS) for expansion of the mine after expiration of NEPA’s statutory deadlines. NEPA, as amended in 2023, requires that an EIS be completed two years after certain trigger dates. In this case, the plaintiff contended that the trigger date was December 2, 2022, when the federal defendants represented that an EIS would be required after the Ninth Circuit found that the defendants violated NEPA, including by failing to provide an explanation for the conclusion that the mine expansion’s greenhouse gas emissions would not be significant. In February 2024, the defendants issued a schedule that projected completion of the EIS in May 2026. The district court found that the coal mine owner-operator had organizational standing because it alleged a sufficient procedural injury, as well as “necessary drain on its resources,” that were traceable to the defendants’ actions and redressable by judicial action. The court further found, however, that the case was prudentially unripe because the defendants had not yet missed the alleged deadline and the owner-operator was not likely to suffer further hardship from deferred judicial review. The court also denied conservation groups’ motion to intervene.

A company that owns and operates an underground coal mine in Montana filed a lawsuit against federal defendants alleging that they had failed to act within NEPA’s statutory and regulatory deadlines to complete an EIS for a mining plan for federal coal in a third amendment to the company’s mining permit. The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) determined in 2022 that an EIS would be required after the Ninth Circuit ruled in an <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/350-montana-v-bernhardt/">earlier case</a> that OSMRE had not adequately explained in an environmental assessment why it determined that the climate impacts of a 2018 mining plan would not be significant. The company alleged that OSMRE now projected that it will not complete the EIS until three and a half years after determining an EIS was required (past the two-year statutory deadline). The company alleged that the delay has caused substantial disruption to its operations and asked the court to set a schedule and deadline for OSMRE to act in compliance with the NEPA deadline.