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A COURT’S LIMIITED REVIEW POWERS RE AN AGENCY’S FINDINGS PURSUANT TO A STATE ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW QUALITY ACT ASSESSMENT CLARIFIED, SUPREME COURT’S REJECTION OF AGENCY FINDINGS REVERSED. 

The First Department, over an extensive dissent, reversing Supreme Court, determined the Department of Health (DOH) had given the requisite “hard look” at air quality and noise mitigation issues for a school near a construction site. The Department of Health had approved the measures pursuant to a review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). The First Department took pains to explain the limited powers of court-review of an agency finding:

It is axiomatic that judicial review of an agency determination under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) is limited to whether the agency procedures were lawful and “whether the agency identified the relevant areas of environmental concern, took a hard look’ at them, and made a reasoned elaboration’ of the basis for its determination” … . Moreover, “[i]t is not the province of the courts to second-guess thoughtful agency decisionmaking and, accordingly, an agency decision should be annulled only if it is arbitrary, capricious or unsupported by the evidence” … . Since it is the responsibility of the agency to analyze reports and other documents submitted to it, “it is not for a reviewing court to duplicate these efforts. As we have repeatedly stated, [w]hile judicial review must be meaningful, the courts may not substitute their judgment for that of the agency, for it is not their role to “weigh the desirability of any action or [to] choose among alternatives”‘” … .

Thus, the court’s province is to “assure that the agency itself has satisfied SEQRA, procedurally and substantively” … . In this regard, “[d]issatisfaction with an agency’s proposed mitigation measures is not redressable by the courts so long as those measures have a rational basis in the record” … . Matter of Friends of P.S. 163, Inc. v Jewish Home Lifecare, Manhattan, 2017 NY Slip Op 00383, 1st Dept 1-19-17

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW (A COURT’S LIMIITED REVIEW POWERS RE AN AGENCY’S FINDINGS PURSUANT TO A STATE ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW QUALITY ACT (SEQRA) REVIEW CLARIFIED, SUPREME COURT’S REJECTION OF AGENCY FINDINGS REVERSED)/ADMINISTRATIVE LAW (ENVIRONMENTAL LAW, A COURT’S LIMIITED REVIEW POWERS RE AN AGENCY’S FINDINGS PURSUANT TO A STATE ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW QUALITY ACT (SEQRA) REVIEW CLARIFIED, SUPREME COURT’S REJECTION OF AGENCY FINDINGS REVERSED)/STATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY REVIEW ACT (SEQRA) (A COURT’S LIMIITED REVIEW POWERS RE AN AGENCY’S FINDINGS PURSUANT TO A STATE ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW QUALITY ACT (SEQRA) REVIEW CLARIFIED, SUPREME COURT’S REJECTION OF AGENCY FINDINGS REVERSED)

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