The courts in New York issued 43 opinions in 2022 under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). Of these, the largest number—27—upheld agency decisions not to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS), and eight overturned such decisions. Six cases upheld actions that had been the subject of an EIS; none overturned such actions. Two cases can’t be classified in this fashion.

These numbers are in line with the longstanding pattern that a project’s greatest litigation vulnerability under SEQRA is the failure to prepare an EIS; if an EIS has been prepared, very rarely will the approvals be annulled on SEQRA grounds.