NEPA Deference Under Seven County Has Its Limits: D.D.C. Preliminarily Blocks Use of Segmentation and Categorical Exclusions To Further Government Golf Course Work

On October 26, in D.C. Preservation League v. U.S. Department of the Interior¹, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia preliminarily held that federal agencies cannot avoid environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of proposed work at the East Potomac Golf Course in Washington, D.C. (Course), by segmenting that work into smaller pieces, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark NEPA ruling in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County² (Seven County) concerning deference to agencies.

The court held that the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and the National Park Service (NPS) (together, the Government) likely violated NEPA by splitting the proposed course redesign into two projects, each of which satisfied categorical exclusions³ from NEPA review.⁴ In so holding, the court rejected the Government’s argument that Seven County eliminated NEPA “segmentation” arguments (i.e., that NEPA-subject projects had been improperly split into smaller phases) and concluded that Seven County deference likely does not extend to agency decisions related to categorical exclusions, which are, at their core, legal decisions, as opposed to an agency’s discretionary conclusions following environmental review.⁵ After reviewing the facts, the court preliminarily enjoined the Government from taking further action on the project, including the removal of certain trees, while the remaining legal issues, including the scope and extent of required NEPA review, are addressed. 

Background

The Course, established in 1911, was designed to be an accessible and affordable option for golfers of all skill levels. It became one of the first public golf courses to integrate after the prohibition on racial segregation.⁶ As a result of that history, the NPS performed cultural landscape studies in 2017 and 2019 that called for the rehabilitation of the Course while preserving its three-course layout and historic trees.⁷ Those recommendations were incorporated into the Course’s 2020 lease to a nonprofit operator, the National Links Trust, but they sat largely dormant for years.⁸ At that time, any substantial work at the Course would have been subject to environmental review under NEPA. That is because a full redesign of a federally owned golf course entailing removal of existing trees, creation of new water features, construction of new buildings, and closing of public roads would have constituted a “major Federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment,” thus triggering NEPA.⁹

Despite the NPS’s initial recommendation, the Government ultimately took a different path at the Course, splitting the project into multiple smaller phases without undergoing NEPA review. In October 2025, relying on a categorical exclusion, the Government deposited more than 30,000 cubic yards of soil from the White House East Wing demolition onto the Course in furtherance of a plan to repurpose the Course into a “championship”-level golf facility.¹⁰ Two months later, the Government terminated the National Links Trust’s lease and assumed direct oversight of the Course.¹¹

In January 2026, President Donald Trump announced plans to convert the Course into a “U.S. Open-caliber course.”¹² In May 2026, Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum unveiled a design by golf course architect Tom Fazio for a single 18-hole championship course to replace the existing three courses.¹³ After touring the Course with Burgum and Fazio in June 2026, Trump announced that construction on the new plans would begin on September 1.¹⁴

Meanwhile, in February 2026, after learning of past and future plans at the Course, the D.C. Preservation League and two regular East Potomac golfers had sued the Government for injunctive relief to halt the proposed changes.¹⁵ Over the ensuing months, while the Government’s plans and announcements played out in parallel, the court repeatedly denied injunctive relief to the plaintiffs, relying on the Government’s assurances that any redesign was conceptual and would undergo full NEPA review, as well as an agreement by the Government’s counsel to notify the plaintiffs before removing more than 10 trees or beginning major construction.¹⁶

In early October 2026, however, the Government escalated additional work at the Course, preparing to implement a Tree Management Plan, which was approved on October 9 through a second categorical exclusion.¹⁷ That same day, at close of business on a Friday before a holiday weekend, the Government notified the plaintiffs and the court of the tree removal plan despite knowing of the planned removal for days.¹⁸ Less than 18 hours later, on October 10, the Government removed nearly 430 trees from the Course.¹⁹ The Government also removed an additional 200 trees that the Tree Management Plan underpinning the categorical exclusion had not specifically identified and that the Government attempted to justify only after the fact.²⁰

Following an application by the plaintiffs, on October 12 the court entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting further work at the Course, which order was informed by the Government’s removal of trees without sufficient prior notice and without a detailed NEPA review.²¹ Nevertheless, on October 18 and 19, Trump announced that work on the Course redesign would begin immediately.²² Despite those apparently contradictory public statements, the Government insisted before the court that no final plan for the Course existed and that the tree removal was simply routine maintenance.²³ The plaintiffs pressed their application for a preliminary injunction, and on October 26, after hearing testimony from four DOI and NPS witnesses, the court converted the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction.²⁴

Analysis

To grant the preliminary injunction requested by the plaintiffs, the court was required to analyze several issues and arguments, including final agency action, standing, Seven County NEPA deference, and the ordinary injunction factors.

Final Agency Action: With respect to finality, the court found that the Government’s plan for Course modifications, including the Tree Management Plan, was sufficiently final under the Administrative Procedure Act to permit judicial review. Despite certain design details remaining unsettled, the Government’s soil dumping, lease termination, tree removal, and announced closure resulted in concrete, irreversible consequences to the Course, all of which supported a finding of final agency action.²⁵ The court rejected the Government’s “routine maintenance” explanation for the tree removal as pretextual. It also rejected the Government’s argument that the Course redesign was exempted from NEPA review altogether because the Government previously promised a full NEPA review.²⁶

Standing: The court held that the individual golfers had standing based on their recreational, aesthetic, and historic interests in the Course. It also held that the league had associational standing through its executive director.²⁷

Seven County NEPA Deference and the Government’s Segmentation Arguments: In opposing the injunction, the Government argued that Seven County required the court to defer to the agencies’ decision to segment work at the Course and grant categorical exclusions for the phases of work that had already been performed. The Supreme Court’s decision in Seven County directs courts to give substantial deference to agencies’ NEPA judgments, including how they define a project’s scope.²⁸

In the instant matter, the court read Seven County as only requiring courts to defer to segmentation decisions “so long as the agency drew a reasonable and manageable line” between phases. The court did not, however, interpret Seven County as completely foreclosing review of the Government’s decision to segment work, nor did it foreclose review of an agency’s application of categorical exclusions.²⁹ The court further did not find that the January 2026 repeal of NEPA’s implementing regulations ended judicial review of project segmentation.³⁰

According to the court, the deference required by Seven County does not reach an agency’s application of categorical exclusions, which “indicate the absence of review” rather than the “reasoned and detailed” environmental analysis that the Supreme Court intended for courts to credit.³¹ Where, as here, categorical exclusions are used in conjunction with segmentation to circumvent NEPA review, scrutiny by a court is appropriate.

The court also noted that, even under the Seven County factors, the agency’s argument for deference to its segmenting decisions fails. Under Seven County, courts “should afford substantial deference and should not micromanage” an agency’s choices about a project’s scope, but only “so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness,” particularly where related projects are separate in time or place or fall outside the agency’s regulatory authority.³² Yet here, as found by the court, two agencies controlled every component of the work, at one location, on a compressed timeline.³³ Thus, under the Seven County standard, the segmenting of the Course project did not qualify for blanket deference.

After holding that segmentation scrutiny is still appropriate following Seven County, the court applied the D.C. Circuit’s four-factor segmentation test under NEPA, which asks whether each phase of a project being segmented “(1) has logical termini; (2) has substantial independent utility; (3) does not foreclose the opportunity to consider alternatives; and (4) does not irretrievably commit federal funds for closely related projects.”³⁴ Not every factor is relevant in each case.³⁵ Three factors favored the plaintiffs’ claim that the Course work was improperly segmented.³⁶ First, the termini were illogical: The agency cut more than 500 healthy, mature trees, ostensibly to restore the Course’s historic design while preparing to replace it with a modern championship course.³⁷ Second, the work lacked independent utility: NPS had already removed the dead, dying, hazardous, and invasive trees, so cutting healthy ones served only the renovation.³⁸ Third, DOI’s “chop-first, review-later approach” foreclosed the no-action alternative NEPA requires.³⁹ The preliminary record was too thin to assess the federal funds factor.⁴⁰

The Injunction: In light of the above, applying the ordinary preliminary injunction test, the court found that the plaintiffs had established a likelihood of success on the merits with respect to the improper segmenting of the Course work and the use of categorical exclusions for the separate phases. Finding that the plaintiffs also faced imminent, irreparable harm because the Government planned to remove around 300 more trees, and that the Government had conceded no urgency, the court barred cutting or damaging any more trees at the Course (subject to a public safety exception). It required 10 business days’ written notice before any closure or irreversible modification of the Course and ordered the Government to show cause why it should not be required to preserve information about the plan and the tree removal.⁴¹

Key takeaways

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Seven County, agencies have taken steps to streamline, or in some cases eliminate, detailed environmental review under NEPA, and courts have generally been more deferential to those agency decisions.⁴² But as the court in D.C. Preservation League held, Seven County deference has its limits. When the record shows that an agency drew project boundaries specifically to avoid review, including through the use of legal mechanisms like categorical exclusions, courts may be more willing to intervene.⁴³

In light of this development, government entities, sponsors, developers, and other stakeholders connected to NEPA-subject projects that are or may be segmented should carefully consider the prospect of court scrutiny and how the decisions underpinning the segmentation can either be challenged or defended.

For more information on NEPA, EISs, EAs, and categorical exclusions, please contact the authors of this client alert.

¹ D.C. Pres. League v. U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244887 (D.D.C. Oct. 26, 2026).
² Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, 605 U.S. 168 (2025).
³ A categorical exclusion is a category of action that a federal agency has determined would ordinarily not result in a significant impact on the quality of the human environment, and therefore it may proceed without an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under NEPA. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 4336(a)(2), 4336e(1).
⁴ See D.C. Pres. League, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244887, at *8, *83-87, *99.
⁵ See id. at *80-81.
⁶ Id. at *10-13.
⁷ Id. at *13-16.
⁸ Id. at *16.
⁹ Id. at *18-19, *50-51, *55.
¹⁰ Id. at *16-17, *76.
¹¹ Id. at *17.
¹² Id.
¹³ Id. at *21.
¹⁴ Id. at *21-23.
¹⁵ Id. at *17-18.
¹⁶ Id. at *18-21, *24-26, *52.
¹⁷ Id. at *26-29.
¹⁸ Id. at *20-21, *25-30.
¹⁹ Id. at *30-31.
²⁰ Id. at *31, *76-77.
²¹ Id. at *32.
²² Id. at *32-33.
²³ Id. at *17, *21-23, *36, *40-44.
²⁴ Id. at *33, *99.
²⁵ Id. at *39-41, *45-50; see 5 U.S.C. § 704.
²⁶ D.C. Pres. League, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244887, at *40-44, *50-53.
²⁷ Id. at *59-66, *69-75.
²⁸ Seven Cnty., 605 U.S. at 185-87.
²⁹ D.C. Pres. League, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244887, at *79-80 (quoting Seven Cnty., 605 U.S. at 190).
³⁰ Id. at *81-83.
³¹ Id. at *80-81 (citing Wash. Area Bicyclist Ass’n v. Burgum, No. 26-cv-0998, 2026 WL 1078218, at *24-25 (D.D.C. Apr. 21, 2026)).
³² 605 U.S. at 183, 187-88.
³³ D.C. Pres. League, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244887, at *84-85.
³⁴ Id. at *85 (quoting Del. Riverkeeper Network v. FERC, 753 F.3d 1304, 1315 (D.C. Cir. 2014)).
³⁵ Id.
³⁶ Id. at *85-87.
³⁷ Id. at *85-86 (citing Del. Riverkeeper, 753 F.3d at 1315).
³⁸ Id. at *86.
³⁹ Id. (citing Citizens Action Coal. of Ind., Inc. v. FERC, 125 F.4th 229, 239 (D.C. Cir. 2025)).
⁴⁰ Id. at *86-87.
⁴¹ Id. at *87-93, *99-102.
⁴² See generally Seven Cnty., 605 U.S. at 185.
⁴³ See D.C. Pres. League, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244887, at *83-87.