Wild Virginia v. Council on Environmental Quality

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of environmental groups’ lawsuit challenging the 2020 amendments to the Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ’s) National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations. The Fourth Circuit found that challenges regarding direct, indirect, and cumulative effects, and reasonable alternatives to the extent they were required to prioritize applicants’ goals were moot due to CEQ’s adoption in 2022 of a rule that returned the regulatory language related to these issues to essentially what was in place prior to the 2020 rule. The Fourth Circuit further concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing to assert claims related to the 2020 rule’s requirements for public comments and that the plaintiffs’ remaining claims were not ripe.