CLEAR Act Blocks Citizen Lawsuits Against Energy Projects After First Challenge is Decided

The Curtailing Litigation Excess and Abuse Reform Act of 2025, or the CLEAR Act, is a bill designed to put energy projects on the fast track by essentially creating a legal firewall around them. The core idea is simple: once an energy project—which includes everything from power plants and transmission lines to fossil fuel pipelines and critical mineral mines—gets its federal authorization, the window for challenging it in court slams shut almost immediately.

The bill defines an “Energy Project” and all its permits and approvals as a single legal entity, a “common nucleus of operative fact.” This is where the game changes. Under the new "Single Action Rule" in Section 2, once any legal challenge to any part of that project is finally decided by a court, no one—not even a different group of concerned citizens or landowners—can file a new lawsuit challenging any other aspect of the same project. This applies even if they are challenging a different permit or agency decision. It’s a massive expansion of the legal doctrine of res judicata (a matter already judged), ensuring that project sponsors and federal agencies only have to fight a legal battle once, which significantly cuts down on legal risk and delays for developers.

The One-Shot Rule: Use It or Lose It

Think of it like this: Imagine a new pipeline is approved. A local environmental group sues over the permit for the compressor station and loses. Under current law, a different group of landowners might still be able to sue over the permit for the pipeline itself, or the route approval. Under the CLEAR Act? Game over. That first lawsuit closes the door for everyone else, permanently barring any future legal action against the entire project. The only exceptions are for lawsuits alleging violations that occur after the project is completed and operational, or enforcement actions brought by the government itself. This provision is a huge win for developers seeking certainty but a significant loss for community groups who rely on staggered litigation to address different concerns across a massive project.

Courts Must Defer to the Agency

Section 3 tackles judicial review, putting a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of the authorizing agencies. When a court reviews a challenge to an authorization, it must now use an extremely high bar: it can only find that the agency failed to follow procedures if it determines the agency “abused its substantial discretion.” This is a massive shift, requiring courts to defer to the agency’s factual determinations and judgment, effectively insulating most agency decisions from meaningful scrutiny. For context, this standard makes it much harder to prove an agency slipped up than under existing administrative law.

And if a court does manage to find a procedural error? The authorization doesn't stop. The project keeps moving. The court's only remedy is to send the authorization back to the agency with specific instructions and a hard deadline—no more than 180 days—to fix the error. The authorization remains fully in effect while the agency makes the required corrections. This means a project with a procedurally flawed permit can continue construction or operation, reducing the leverage citizens have to stop or pause a project until all legal issues are resolved.

Making It Harder to Get Your Day in Court

The bill also tightens the rules for who can even file a lawsuit in the first place. To challenge an authorization, you must have filed a lawsuit within 150 days of the final agency action. More importantly, if there was a public comment period, you must prove you submitted a "substantive, unique, and sufficiently detailed comment" during that period, demonstrated that you would suffer "direct harm," and that your lawsuit concerns the exact same subject matter you raised in your comment. This is a major hurdle. It means if you or your community group missed the specific comment window, or if your comment wasn't deemed "detailed" enough by a judge, you lose your right to sue, even if you are directly harmed by the project later on. For busy people, especially landowners or small business owners who aren't policy experts, navigating this administrative gauntlet just to preserve the right to sue is a significant burden.