The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) became the first major environmental legislation passed in the United States when it was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970. It also represented one of the earliest tangible victories of the nascent environmental movement.
NEPA, which has been called the Magna Carta of federal environmental law, requires agencies to take environmental impact into account when making decisions about projects, legislation, or policy. It is a broad mandate that has affected everything from the design of interstate highways to the permitting of gas pipelines and even the flight paths of military aircraft.
Over the decades, NEPA has been hailed for preventing pollution, preserving landscapes, and keeping drinking water clean. It also has been criticized by politicians who allege that it can hinder efforts to boost the economy, create jobs, or reduce housing and energy prices. Recently, NEPA has been subject to repeated reinterpretations and legislative tweaks as both Democrats and Republicans pursue their own policy goals, and a series of court cases have changed the way the government executes the law.
“That has caused a lot of interesting work for environmental lawyers,” says Jennifer Scheller Neumann, ’03, who has spent nearly her entire career in the field. “Obviously, any time there's a change in administration, there will be different priorities in terms of what they want to focus on. But recently there has been a lot more flux.”
From section chief to private practice
For Neumann, some of the recent flux has been more personal. In 2004, after a clerkship for a federal appeals court judge, Neumann joined the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the US Department of Justice. She worked her way through the ranks of the division and eventually became chief of the appellate section, a senior role that required encyclopedic knowledge of environmental law and related areas.
“I absolutely loved it,” Neumann says. “The people there were so smart and so giving of their time to develop young attorneys. Becoming chief of the section was incredibly rewarding.”
In the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term, however, Neumann was reassigned to a new unit, which the Department of Justice had created to handle questions related to a particular area of immigration law. With no experience in that area of immigration law, Neumann decided it was time to leave government. In April 2025, she accepted a role as of counsel in the Washington, DC, offices of the Denver-based firm Holland & Hart LLP.
“I thought that I could make better use of my experience in the private sector, representing private clients, and so I decided to make the leap,” she says.
Now, instead of government agencies, Neumann’s clients are energy and mining companies that need to ensure their projects comply with environmental law—even as regulations, enforcement priorities, and interpretations shift.
In some ways, moving from public service to private practice requires new ways of thinking, but Neumann says that her time in government has been an enormous asset in providing clients with the best possible advice on complicated matters of environmental law.
“I have spent 20 years working on cutting-edge environmental law issues, and I bring that experience to the issues my clients are dealing with,” she says. “Plus, I have a lot of contacts who are still in the government, and I know how people in the government approach problems and make decisions, which is particularly helpful to private clients. Regardless of the administration, some things remain the same in terms of how the government operates.”
Recently, Neumann says, she was advising a client on a permitting matter that might have been complicated by a recent decision by the US Supreme Court. The state agency that would issue the permit had developed its own interpretation of the case, relying on a guidance document issued by a federal agency, but Neumann knew that the guidance document was not finalized.
“I worked with the client to develop comments to the agency, suggesting that the state attorneys might want to revise and give themselves a little more wiggle room,” Neumann says. Someone with less experience in government might have advised the client to accept the state agency’s reliance on the guidance document at face value, she notes. “Understanding the process of how those guidance documents are made was critical.”
Jennifer Scheller Neumann, ’03I know how people in the government approach problems and make decisions, which is particularly helpful to private clients. Regardless of the administration, some things remain the same in terms of how the government operates.
The fallout from Loper Bright and other rulings
Indeed, several recent decisions by the Supreme Court have contributed to upheavals in the practical application of environmental law. Among these is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), which overruled Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC (1984). Where the latter had given government agencies broad leeway when it came to defining legal terms and creating regulation based on legislation, Loper Bright mandated that lower courts use independent judgment when reviewing agencies’ regulatory actions. The effect was to newly empower the judiciary, after 40 years of courts deferring to executive agencies.
“That has been a sea change in environmental law and in terms of thinking about how clients go about the permit process, and then also how they defend permitting decisions if they're challenged in court by some outside entity,” Neumann says. “That's a big area of concern always, to just make sure we're keeping in mind what the new standard is, and how that can help or hurt the client.”
Loper Bright was the sort of landmark decision that comes along only a few times in a generation, but Neumann also flags Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado (2024) among other recent cases that have had a major impact. In Seven County, the Supreme Court clarified that courts should give agencies substantial deference in determining what environmental consequences and alternatives to consider under the National Environmental Policy Act. That decision simplifies things for her clients.
On the other hand, in November 2024, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declared, in Marin Audubon Society, et al., v. Federal Aviation Administration, et al., that the White House Council on Environmental Quality, an agency long empowered under NEPA, could no longer issue regulations that bind other agencies.
“The Trump administration then instructed all of the various federal agencies to come up with their own NEPA regulations and guidance,” Neumann says. “They've tried to coordinate, but there are still differences between the agencies’ approaches that will create uncertainty until we see how courts view the new requirements.”
For Neumann, however, guiding clients through these twists and turns is part of what makes environmental law such an appealing area of practice.
“There are always new developments from the legal side, and learning about that and keeping abreast of it is intellectually challenging and rewarding. While I’m bringing my past experiences to every new client situation, there's always some new aspect or wrinkle that I'm learning about, and that's what keeps it interesting.”
