Alaska Community Action on Toxics v. Council on Environmental Quality

Environmental groups filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Alaska challenging the Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ’s) amendments to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations. The plaintiffs asserted that CEQ should have prepared an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement under the existing regulations to evaluate the amendments’ impacts, including environmental justice impacts and impacts on efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to evaluate how a changing climate affects proposed projects. The Alaska plaintiffs also asserted that CEQ failed to comply with NEPA and/or the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to review environmental justice impacts, by violating standards that apply to agency decision-making, by promulgating rules that are contrary to the plain language and purpose of NEPA, and by invalidly attempting to amend statutory thresholds for judicial review.