The Litigation Hydra of Interim Final Rules

The Trump administration claims there’s an emergency: federal environmental regulations are too burdensome, and agencies need relief immediately. On his first day in office, President Trump signed Executive Order 14154, Unleashing American Energy, revoking the Carter-era directive that gave the Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ, the Council) authority to issue binding regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In its place, Trump directed the Council to eliminate those regulations and replace them with non-binding guidance.

Audaciously and despite legal risk, the Council issued an interim final rule (IFR) that removed its 1978 NEPA regulations. The Council also distributed a memo to agencies—which we only know about because it leaked—instructing agencies to withdraw their NEPA-implementing regulations and revise internal NEPA procedures as quickly as possible, using interim final rules. The move aims to rapidly implement the President’s energy order by invoking emergency authority, usually reserved for genuine crises, to bypass the usual public comment process. Skipping public comment lets the Council push agencies to act fast and cut through the bureaucracy that slows normal rulemaking.

However, this strategy is likely to backfire. The problem isn’t just that the Council’s unified framework fractured into agency-by-agency procedures. The council invoked “good cause” to eliminate its regulations, bypassing a standard public comment procedure. The Department of Energy followed, issuing its own interim final rule. So did the departments of the Interior and Agriculture, among others, each claiming that administrative urgency justifies skipping standard rulemaking. The result is a litigation hydra: multiple agency frameworks, each adopted using dubious emergency shortcuts already being litigated in court. What was meant to expedite decision-making has instead invited greater procedural uncertainty and prolonged litigation. This whitepaper examines the historical context of CEQ and the recent Seven County decision, and argues that the rationale behind the 2025 IFR is fragile, opening up agencies and builders to more, rather than less, litigation.