On Tuesday, the Supreme Court hears Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, a case that could help decide the fate of vital energy infrastructure projects. At issue is whether the Surface Transportation Board (STB) should have assessed climate impacts when authorizing an 87-mile railway meant to connect Utah’s waxy crude oil to the national rail network and on to Gulf Coast refineries.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to study potentially significant environmental impacts of federal permits for infrastructure projects. The Court will decide whether this obligation extends to “upstream” and “downstream” impacts—such as climate effects—beyond the agency’s jurisdiction and expertise.

In 2004, the Court ruled in Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen that agencies need not study impacts that they lack statutory authority to prevent. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Public Citizen doesn’t apply here, because the STB’s discretion to assess whether a railway serves the “public interest” is broad and includes mitigating climate change.

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The Supreme Court has previously clarified that the “public interest” standard is not a license to address general societal goals. In 1976, the Court held in NAACP v. FPC that “public interest” must derive meaning from the specific purpose of the legislation, which for the STB is adequate rail transport, not climate policy.

The case represents the flip side of the Court’s decision to jettison “Chevron deference” to agency interpretations of statutes earlier this year. If deciding questions of law is the province of courts under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), technical and policy judgments are the competence of administrative agencies—so long as they are acting within their jurisdiction and expertise.

The D.C. Circuit casually dismissed that consideration, substituting its judgment for the STB’s as to matters at the very heart of the agency’s jurisdiction and expertise—immediate economic impact, increased railway fire hazard, and the like—while at the same time holding the agency to extensive analysis of climate impacts, a subject over which the STB has no jurisdiction or expertise.

Indeed, had the STB denied the railway permit based on amateur climate concerns, its decision could be overturned as “arbitrary and capricious” under the APA for lacking a reasonable basis and for relying on factors Congress never intended the agency to consider. As the Supreme Court indicated two years ago in West Virginia v. EPA, Congress would presumably not task agencies with policy judgments outside their jurisdiction and expertise.

Seven County highlights another major problem facing American infrastructure. In 1978, the White House Council on Environmental Quality released “NEPA Implementing Regulations.” These guidelines require agencies to study “cumulative effects” and impacts outside the agency’s jurisdiction, among many other things. Of course, a president has authority to issue directives as tools to manage the executive branch. But federal courts have also assumed—with no justification—that the CEQ Regulations are judicially enforceable, which has significantly increased federal permits’ vulnerability to litigation.

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As a D.C. Circuit panel ruled weeks ago in an unrelated case, NEPA delegates no rulemaking authority to CEQ. The CEQ’s “Regulations” were cleverly dressed up to look like regulations and have fooled many judges into thinking that they are regulations, but in fact they are merely directives to executive agency heads. Under our Constitution, the president cannot make law.

The Roberts Court has proven increasingly willing to eschew judicial minimalism where the Constitution’s separation of powers is at stake. Hence, the Court may also notice in this case that NEPA creates no private right of action. That didn’t stop activist courts in the 1970s from inventing one out of thin air, just as CEQ invented its so-called “Regulations,” but this case gives the Court the opportunity to rectify that error as well.

Seven County shows the many ways that the administrative state and activist courts have created a massive industry of litigation over minor omissions in environmental impact statements, though Congress intended no such thing. That industry has undermined the democratic process and has made America’s system for permitting vital infrastructure the most inefficient, unpredictable, and costly on earth.

The case comes at a critical time. The U.S. must rapidly expand electricity generation to prevent the rapid escalation of energy prices. Excessive red tape and litigation risk under NEPA threaten to derail the infrastructure projects needed to meet growing energy demands. This case gives the Court has a chance to affirm the Constitution’s limits on the administrative state and pave the way for the modern energy infrastructure Americans need and deserve.