https://crsreports.congress.gov
April 9, 2025
Council on Environmental Quality Rescinds NEPA Regulations:
Legal and Policy Considerations
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA; 42 U.S.C.
§§4321 et seq.) establishes a national policy with respect to
environmental quality and the basic process for integrating
environmental considerations into federal decisionmaking
(i.e., “environmental reviews”). NEPA’s environmental
review process generally requires that agencies consider the
environmental impacts of major federal actions. For actions
with significant impacts, agencies generally must consider
alternatives and disclose the potential effects of those
actions. NEPA is typically described as a procedural statute,
focusing on the process of decisionmaking rather than
mandating specific environmental outcomes. Agencies
retain flexibility to decide how to implement proposed
actions provided they meet NEPA’s procedural
requirements. This In Focus provides an overview of the
Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ’s) historical role
in NEPA oversight, including its regulatory framework. For
a discussion of NEPA’s core elements, see CRS In Focus
IF12560, National Environmental Policy Act: An Overview,
by Kristen Hite (2023).
NEPA established CEQ
within the Executive Office of the
President. Among other duties, NEPA directs CEQ to assist
and advise the President on certain environmental matters,
including NEPA implementation. The act instructs federal
agencies to “identify and develop methods and procedures,
in consultation with CEQ,” to implement NEPA. As
discussed in the recent court cases cited below, NEPA does
not expressly direct CEQ to issue regulations that agencies
would be required to follow. Nevertheless, over the course
of nearly five decades, CEQ maintained—and agencies and
courts routinely applied—government-wide regulations
implementing NEPA. This practice ended on February 25,
2025, when CEQ issued an interim final rule rescinding its
NEPA regulations in their entirety.
Changing Landscape of CEQ NEPA
Guidance and Implementing Regulations
Over the decades since NEPA was enacted, CEQ’s
approach has evolved in response to administrative
priorities, statutory amendments, and judicial interpretation.
These changes have shaped how agencies conduct
environmental reviews and apply NEPA’s procedural
requirements. CEQ’s guidance and regulations have
traditionally served as a mechanism to standardize NEPA
implementation across agencies. They include procedural
requirements not explicitly addressed in statute.
Establishment of CEQ Regulations
In 1970, E.O. 11514 directed CEQ to, among other things,
issue guidelines to address the preparation of detailed
“environmental statements” under Section 102(2)(C) of
NEPA. CEQ issued its first set of guidelines in 1971 and
updated them in 1973 to introduce provisions on public
involvement, draft and final environmental impact
statements (EISs), and the concepts of environmental
assessments (EAs). The guidelines were incorporated in 40
C.F.R. Part 1500, in part, to make them widely accessible.
For most of the 1970s, CEQ’s NEPA guidelines informed
NEPA’s implementation, but agency approaches varied,
resulting in perceived delays in decisionmaking. In 1978, as
directed by E.O. 11991, CEQ finalized its first binding
regulations. Due, in part, to concerns over inconsistencies
in NEPA implementation, CEQ introduced “an efficient,
uniform procedure” applicable to all federal agencies in the
form of binding regulations that became effective in 1979.
CEQ stated that the “three principal aims” of these
regulations were “to reduce paperwork, to reduce delays,
and at the same time to produce better decisions.” In
addition to establishing a uniform baseline procedure,
CEQ’s NEPA regulations directed each federal agency to
establish its own procedures reflecting agency-specific
statutory requirements, regulations, and guidance. CEQ
amended its NEPA regulations in 1986 and 2010.
Revisions to CEQ NEPA Regulations
In 2020, CEQ issued a rule (the 2020 Rule) that in some
respects limited the scope of agencies’ NEPA analyses. The
2020 updates followed President Trump’s E.O. 13807
(2017), which directed CEQ to, among other things, review
and modernize its NEPA regulations to emphasize
efficiency in environmental reviews for infrastructure
projects. After receiving more than 1 million comments on
its proposed rule, on July 16, 2020, CEQ promulgated the
2020 Rule, representing the most comprehensive revision of
NEPA regulations in more than 40 years.
In 2021, President Biden issued E.O. 13990, directing
agencies to review and address regulatory actions from the
prior administration that were inconsistent with specified
environmental, public health, and climate objectives. CEQ
subsequently announced a two-phased rulemaking approach
to reconsider the 2020 Rule. CEQ then rescinded or further
amended some portions of the 2020 Rule in 2022 (the Phase
1 Rule) and additional portions in 2024 (the Phase 2 Rule).
In June 2023, Congress amended NEPA in the Fiscal
Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA; P.L. 118-5). On May 1,
2024, CEQ issued its Phase 2 Rule to implement the FRA
NEPA amendments and for certain other purposes. Some of
