"A coalition of mostly red states launched the first legal challenge against the Biden administration’s recent environmental permitting rule on Tuesday.

Chief among the plaintiffs’ arguments is that the Council on Environmental Quality’s rule illegally changes the National Environmental Policy Act’s procedures for reviews “into a substantive set of requirements to achieve broad and vague policy goals.”

The rule wrongly gives preferential treatment to “politically motivated” projects, the 20 plaintiff states said in their filing before the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota.

Although CEQ has claimed that the rule is meant to streamline permitting across the board, it also inserts arbitrary mandates into the process “with the foreseeable effect of delaying and foreclosing disfavored types of projects,” the lawsuit alleges."

Stephen Lee reports for Bloomberg Environment May 21, 2024. [2]