Save Our Cumberland Mountains v. Kempthorne

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that, “while the agency did not identify additional alternatives in so many words in the environmental assessment, it plainly considered alternatives during the administrative process”
• applying harmless-error analysis to a NEPA claim where NEPA’s purposes would not be served, i.e., where the error would have no bearing on the agency’s decision or would not cause prejudice
• NEPA “serves procedural rather than substantive goals. It does not require agencies to ‘achieve particular substantive environmental results....’”
• “We review an agency’s environmental assessment, and its decision that an environmental impact statement need not be prepared, under the deferential ‘arbitrary and capricious’ standard.” (citation omitted)
• “When faced with a lawsuit under [NEPA], a federal court has authority to review the agency’s action under the [APA]”
• “[P]laintiffs have not shown that this error had any chance (or still has any chance) of altering the agency’s deliberations or conclusions.... On appeal plaintiffs have not identified a single alternative that the agency should have considered but did not.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).