NEPA Changes: CEQ Regulations Rescinded, 2023 Amendments Retained

The National Environmental Policy Act itself has not been repealed, but almost everything around it has shifted. The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 wrote hard deadlines, page limits, a narrower trigger for review, and a right to sue over missed deadlines directly into the statute. In early 2025, a federal court vacated the Biden administration’s Phase 2 regulatory rule, and the Trump administration then rescinded every Council on Environmental Quality NEPA regulation from the Code of Federal Regulations. The Supreme Court, in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, narrowed the scope of effects agencies must analyze. Congress is considering the SPEED Act, which would go further still. These are the NEPA changes now shaping federal environmental review, and here is where each one stands.

The 2023 Statutory Amendments That Remain in Force

The Fiscal Responsibility Act put deadlines into NEPA’s text. An Environmental Assessment must be completed within one year. An Environmental Impact Statement must be completed within two years. For an EIS, the clock starts on whichever comes first: the agency’s decision that an EIS is required, its notice that a right-of-way application is complete, or its published notice of intent.¹ Before these deadlines existed, reviews commonly dragged on for five or more years with no consequence.

The same statute caps document length. An Environmental Assessment cannot exceed 75 pages. An EIS is limited to 150 pages for standard projects or 300 pages for actions the agency determines are extraordinarily complex. Citations and appendices do not count toward these limits.²

Agencies can extend a deadline by issuing a new schedule with a senior agency official’s approval and written justification. If an agency misses the statutory deadline, the project sponsor can sue in federal court to compel a decision.³ That right of action gives applicants leverage they never had before. Because these provisions are written into the statute itself, they are not affected by the regulatory rescissions that followed.

A Narrower Definition of Major Federal Action

NEPA review is only triggered when an agency takes a “major federal action.” The FRA added a statutory definition requiring that the action involve “substantial federal control and responsibility.”⁴ The statute then carves out categories that do not qualify:

Non-federal projects receiving little or no federal funding, or where the agency cannot control the outcome.
Loans and loan guarantees where the agency does not exercise sufficient control over how the money is used or over the action’s effects.
Small Business Administration loan guarantees under Section 7(a) or (b) of the Small Business Act and Title V of the Small Business Investment Act.
General revenue sharing funds where the agency has no compliance or enforcement role.
Non-discretionary actions the agency is required by statute to take.
Actions with effects located entirely outside U.S. jurisdiction.

Before the FRA, some agencies treated any federal funding connection as a potential trigger. The new definition pushes back against that approach, and fewer projects now require NEPA review at the threshold stage.

Categorical Exclusions Can Now Be Borrowed Across Agencies

Categorical exclusions let agencies skip detailed review for activities that normally do not cause significant environmental harm. Routine maintenance and minor facility upgrades are common examples. The FRA added a provision allowing one agency to adopt a categorical exclusion that another agency already established, rather than building its own from scratch.⁵

To borrow an exclusion, the adopting agency must identify the specific exclusion, consult with the agency that created it, give public notice, and document the adoption. A land management agency that needs to perform road maintenance can adopt a transportation agency’s existing exclusion rather than spending months developing its own. Exclusions still have limits. If a specific project has unusual characteristics, such as impacts on endangered species, wetlands, historic properties, or drinking water sources, the agency must conduct a more detailed review regardless of the exclusion.

The Phase 2 Rule Was Vacated, and All CEQ Regulations Were Rescinded

In May 2024, the Council on Environmental Quality finalized the Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule, known as Phase 2.⁶ It added obligations for climate analysis, environmental justice review, cumulative effects assessment, and expanded public participation, going beyond what the FRA required.

The rule did not last a year. On February 3, 2025, a federal district court in North Dakota granted summary judgment to plaintiff states, finding that CEQ lacks statutory authority to issue binding regulations implementing NEPA and, alternatively, that the Phase 2 rule exceeded whatever authority CEQ possessed and was arbitrary and capricious. The court vacated the rule.⁷

The Trump administration then went further. On January 20, 2025, Executive Order 14154, “Unleashing American Energy,” revoked the earlier executive order that had directed CEQ to issue NEPA regulations and instructed CEQ to propose rescinding its NEPA regulations within 30 days. On February 25, 2025, CEQ published an interim final rule removing all of its NEPA implementing regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations, effective April 11, 2025.⁷ Parts 1500 through 1508 of Title 40 CFR, which had governed NEPA practice for decades, were removed and reserved.

What Agencies Are No Longer Required to Analyze

The rescission does not repeal NEPA. Agencies still must review major federal actions for significant environmental effects. But several specific requirements from the Phase 2 rule and earlier regulations are no longer in force. CEQ issued non-binding guidance in February 2025 directing agencies on how to implement NEPA without the regulations, with an updated version in October 2025.³

Three areas have shifted noticeably:

Cumulative effects. The February 2025 CEQ guidance tells agencies to analyze “reasonably foreseeable” effects but not to use the term “cumulative effects,” which NEPA’s text does not employ. Agencies now have more room to limit how far they trace a project’s ripple effects.
Environmental justice. Agencies are no longer directed to include environmental justice analyses in NEPA documents. The guidance notes that President Trump revoked the executive orders that had underpinned those requirements.
Greenhouse gas quantification. No binding requirement currently compels agencies to quantify emissions in NEPA documents, though some agencies may continue to do so under their own procedures.

Individual agencies still maintain their own NEPA procedures, and those vary. E.O. 14154 directed the CEQ Chairman to convene a working group to coordinate revisions across agencies, but until that process is complete, each agency operates under its own rules along with the statutory text and the non-binding CEQ guidance.

The Supreme Court Narrowed the Scope of Effects Analysis

In May 2025, the Supreme Court decided Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, a case about an 88-mile railway in Utah’s Uinta Basin. The lower court had ruled the EIS inadequate because it failed to analyze the environmental effects of oil drilling and refining the railway might facilitate. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that NEPA does not require agencies to analyze the effects of separate projects that are removed in time or place from the action under review.⁸

The opinion sets out several principles:

NEPA’s text centers on the “proposed action,” not separate projects. A highway agency does not need to study the environmental effects of a housing development that might someday be built nearby.
A separate project can break the causal chain. When an indirect effect depends on an independent third-party decision, the agency can treat the connection as too attenuated to require analysis.
Agencies are not required to analyze effects of projects over which they have no regulatory control.
Courts should give substantial deference to agency decisions about where to draw the line, so long as those decisions fall within “a broad zone of reasonableness.”

Combined with the rescission of the cumulative-effects framework, this decision gives agencies significant latitude to keep environmental documents focused on the project itself rather than on downstream consequences.

The SPEED Act Would Go Further, If It Passes

The SPEED Act passed the House of Representatives in December 2025 and was received by the Senate.⁹ It has not been enacted. If it becomes law, it would redefine “major federal action” so that providing federal funds alone cannot trigger NEPA, exempt actions already reviewed under another federal, state, or tribal statute that meets NEPA’s requirements, and direct agencies to consider only effects “proximately caused by the immediate project or action under consideration.”

The most contentious provision limits judicial remedies. Under current law, courts finding NEPA violations can vacate the agency’s decision entirely, halting the project. The SPEED Act would restrict remedies and could make remand without vacatur the default, meaning a deficient review could be sent back for correction while the project continues to operate. That would change the risk calculus for both agencies and challengers because the threat of project shutdown is what gives NEPA litigation most of its force. The bill’s fate in the Senate is uncertain.

Where This Leaves a Project Today

NEPA’s core requirement is intact. Federal agencies must review major federal actions that significantly affect the environment, preparing an Environmental Impact Statement when effects are significant and an Environmental Assessment when significance is uncertain.¹⁰ Around that core, the framework has been rebuilt.

The FRA’s statutory amendments are durable. Deadlines, page limits, the narrower major-federal-action definition, cross-agency categorical exclusion adoption, and the right to sue over missed deadlines are all written into the statute and cannot be undone by executive action. The Biden-era Phase 2 additions for climate analysis, environmental justice, and cumulative effects are gone. CEQ’s entire body of implementing regulations has been removed from the CFR, leaving agencies to rely on their own procedures and non-binding CEQ guidance. The Supreme Court has told lower courts to defer to agencies when they limit the scope of effects analysis.

For anyone with a project subject to NEPA review, the statutory floor is clear, but the procedural detail is not. Agency-specific procedures vary and are being revised. Consulting the current guidance from the specific agency involved matters more now than at any point in NEPA’s history.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 4336a – Timely and Unified Federal Reviews
2
Congress.gov. Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023
3
Council on Environmental Quality. Implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 US Code 4336e – Definitions
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 4336c – Adoption of Categorical Exclusions
6
Federal Register. National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations Revisions Phase 2
7
Federal Register. Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations
8
Supreme Court of the United States. Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County
9
Congress.gov. H.R. 4776 – SPEED Act, 119th Congress (2025-2026)
10
US EPA. What is the National Environmental Policy Act