Comment submitted by Our Children's Trust

RE: Comment for Update of Procedures for Implementing the National Environmental Policy Act and Assessing the Environmental Effects Abroad of EPA Actions Proposed Rule (EPA-HQ-AO-2025-1080) Dear Administrator Zeldin, On behalf of all of our youth clients, including our clients in Lighthiser v. Trump and Venner v. EPA, and in the interest of America’s children and youth, Our Children’s Trust provides these comments on the EPA’s “Update of Procedures for Implementing the National Environmental Policy Act and Assessing the Environmental Effects Abroad of EPA Actions” proposed rule. In abandoning the purpose of NEPA, this rulemaking would facilitate fossil fuel development and consumption, in violation of children’s constitutional rights to religious freedom, health, safety, and bodily integrity, and is unjustified by law, science, economic prosperity, energy security, or any other reason. In addition to being illegal, this proposed rule will accelerate fossil fuel development, worsening the adverse health effects of fossil fuel pollution our clients are currently suffering directly through their inhalation and exposure to the localized pollution and the heat-trapping greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, resulting in further dangerous disruptions of the climate system on which these youths’ health and lives depend. As the Nation’s only law firm dedicated to representing children and youth whose constitutional rights are being infringed by government conduct that causes and contributes to climate change, we write to advise you that your proposed rulemaking must be consistent with protecting the rights to life, personal security, family autonomy, bodily integrity, the practice and transmission of cultural and religious traditions, children’s equal protection of the law, and free exercise of religion. U.S. Const. amend. V, XIV, § 1, I; 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1 (Religious Freedom Restoration Act). Here, you are engaged in unconstitutional rulemaking to implement the provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that illegally revise NEPA and the President’s Executive Orders 14154, 14156, and 14261, in violation of U.S. Const. amend. V, XIV, § 1, I; 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1 (Religious Freedom Restoration Act). This rulemaking effort also violates the separation of powers, by exceeding the authority the EPA been delegated by Congress under the U.S. Constitution and NEPA and by engaging in conduct that has a significant effect on U.S. public health, welfare and the economy, while lacking any scientific integrity as Congress has mandated. Congress has not given the EPA the statutory authority to deprive children and youth of their fundamental rights listed above, nor does the EPA have the delegated authority to interpret statutes like NEPA in a manner that contravenes the U.S. Constitution. Please see the attachment. Sincerely, /s/ Julia Olson Co-executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel julia@ourchildrenstrust.org Our Children’s Trust P.O. Box 5181 Eugene, OR 97405