D.C. Circuit Recognizes the Abrogation of Sabal Trail
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D.C. Circuit Recognizes the Abrogation of Sabal Trail

On September 30, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued Sierra Club v. FERC, No. 24-1099,  __ F.4th __ (D.C. Cir. 2025) (Cumberland), which upheld the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) authorization of a 32-mile pipeline that will supply natural gas to a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) project for which TVA is replacing a coal-fired power unit with a natural gas turbine. The opinion is significant because the D.C. Circuit recognized, for the first time, that its controversial Sabal Trail decision was abrogated by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado.

Sabal Trail

Sierra Club v. FERC, 867 F.3d 1357 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (Sabal Trail) addressed challenges to FERC’s authorization of the Southeast Market Pipelines Project, which was comprised of three pipelines in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida intended to supply natural gas for the purpose of electric generation in Florida. The D.C. Circuit held that FERC was a “legally relevant cause” of the end-use emissions—and thus required to consider them under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—because, in the court’s view, FERC could deny the pipelines’ certificates on the ground that the pipelines would be too harmful to the environment. Id. at 1373.

Seven County

Seven County was the Supreme Court’s first major NEPA opinion in over twenty years and constituted a self-described “course correction” for NEPA jurisprudence. 145 S.Ct. 1497, 1514 (2025). In it the Court recognized the need for substantial deference to agency decisionmaking under NEPA and emphasized that the focus of agencies’ analyses should be the environmental effects of the project at issue. Seven County reiterated that agencies are not “required to analyze the effects of projects over which they do not exercise regulatory authority.” Id. at 1516; see also Dep’t of Transp. v. Pub. Citizen, 541 U.S. 752, 767-68 (2004).

Cumberland

In Cumberland, the court upheld FERC’s conclusions that market need was established by TVA’s promise to buy 100 percent of the pipeline’s capacity for 20 years, and that the pipeline’s benefits outweighed its harms. The court grounded the latter conclusion in its determination that FERC’s environmental impact statement sufficiently addressed the project’s environmental impacts, a conclusion made easier in this case where the pipeline resulted in a net emissions reduction due to the project’s fuel source migration from coal to natural gas.

The court rejected petitioner’s Sabal Trail argument because “it asks [the court] to demand exactly what Seven County says we cannot demand.” The court explained that FERC’s lack of jurisdiction over electric generation precludes the need to study the downstream emissions impacts in the pipeline’s EIS and subsequently recognized that Seven County “abrogated” Sabal Trail. Slip op. at *8.

Although not writing separately, it is noteworthy that Judge Pillard joined the court’s opinion except as to the parts that described Seven County’s effect on FERC’s downstream NEPA analyses and the conclusion that Seven County abrogated Sabal Trail. This indicates that a range of views may exist on the court as to Sabal Trail’s continued viability, which will likely need to be further borne out in subsequent opinions.

Closing Thoughts

Sabal Trail was controversial from the outset. See, e.g., Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng’rs, 941 F.3d 1288, 1300 (11th Cir. 2019) (“[T]he legal analysis in Sabal Trail is questionable at best. It fails to take seriously the rule of reason announced in Public Citizen or to account for the untenable consequences of its decision.”). In reaching its conclusion, the court needed to reconcile a trio of 2016 liquified natural gas (LNG) cases in which the D.C. Circuit relied on Public Citizen to hold that FERC need not analyze climate-change impacts of LNG exports because the Department of Energy, not FERC, authorizes the export of LNG. The court attempted to do so by asserting that FERC is forbidden from considering the effects of LNG exports as a justification for denying an authorization under section 3 of the Natural Gas Act (NGA) due to the nature of its delegated authority from DOE; whereas, under section 7, Congress broadly instructed FERC to consider the public convenience and necessity. Sabal Trail, 867 F.3d at 1373 (citing Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of U.S. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983) (explaining that an agency acts arbitrarily and capriciously if it makes a decision based on “factors which Congress had not intended it to consider”)).

However, the court’s reliance on State Farm to distinguish between FERC’s authority under section 3 versus section 7 of the NGA was always suspect because, as recognized in Cumberland, FERC is expressly precluded from regulating electric generators under the Federal Power Act. See 16 U.S.C. § 824(b)(1) (stating that the FPA does not apply to “facilities used for the generation of electric energy”). So, to the extent that FERC’s consideration of emissions from gas exports would run afoul of the factors Congress intended it to consider under its delegated NGA section 3 authority, FERC would necessarily do the same under NGA section 7 by considering emissions from generators over which it expressly lacks regulatory authority. Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that authority to regulate for the public interest “is not a broad license to promote the general welfare,” but rather “the words take meaning from the purposes of the regulatory legislation.” NAACP v. FPC, 425 U.S. 662, 669 (1976). NAACP recognized that FERC’s authority under the NGA must be understood in light of Congress’ principal purpose “to encourage orderly development of plentiful and reasonably priced natural gas.”

In Cumberland, the D.C. Circuit took a major step in closing the door on the Sabal Trail era of its NEPA jurisprudence. It also merits noting that FERC has determined that Seven County obviates its need to consider downstream GHG emissions from sources over which it does not exercise regulatory authority. See Transcon. Gas Pipe Line Co., 192 FERC ¶ 61,184, at P 108 (2025); E. Tenn. Nat. Gas, LLC, 192 FERC ¶ 61,153, at PP 23, 28 (2025).

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