HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined a coalition of 20 states in filing a lawsuit Tuesday against the Biden administration’s new permitting rule that illegally mandates social, environmental, and race-based regulations for infrastructure projects.

The Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) new National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rule will force Americans to pay more for energy; face delays for projects such as new housing, power plants, roads, and bridges; and suffer from project cancelations.

“Yet, through this Final Rule, the Council seeks to turn back the clock and transform NEPA’s foundational purposes by undoing the modernizations and consolidation achieved in the 2020 regulations. The Final Rule violates the plain language and purpose of NEPA, its legislative history, and binding precedent. The Final Rule also lacks reasoned basis in the record and is otherwise arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (‘APA’),” the attorneys general wrote in the lawsuit. “The Final Rule will add complexities and significantly exacerbate delays in the NEPA process and work against NEPA’s goal of encouraging balanced public engagement.”

Historically, NEPA has been a procedural statute that requires agencies to consider significant environmental impacts before they act and offer those views to the public. However, the new rule transforms it into a substantive statute, imposing regulatory approval on entities for important projects as a way for the Biden administration to accelerate an “energy transition” away from traditional sources of energy.

The illegal double standard favors projects that align with the Biden administration’s radical climate change agenda, while projects that use traditional energy sources will face stricter regulations.

Additionally, the rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act and federal law requiring that significant legislation go through Congress, rather than unelected bureaucrats.

Read the lawsuit here.