CLEAR Act of 2025

This bill aims to prevent repeated lawsuits against energy projects by limiting legal challenges to a single action and setting strict rules for judicial review. It applies to projects for electric energy, fossil fuels, petrochemical feedstocks, and critical minerals. The bill does not create new rights or affect post-completion operational violations or government enforcement actions.

Sec. 2, Preclusion of repeat litigation: All authorizations for an energy project are treated as a single set of facts. Once a lawsuit about any part of an energy project is finally decided on its merits, no new lawsuit about that project can be brought in any federal or state court, regardless of who sues or what relief is sought. Only the federal agency that issued the authorization or the project sponsor can use this rule to block later lawsuits. Exceptions include lawsuits about operational violations after the project is complete and enforcement actions by the U.S. or a state.

Sec. 3, Judicial review: When reviewing a lawsuit, a court can only find that an agency failed to follow procedural rules if the agency abused its substantial discretion. Courts must defer to the agency on factual issues and cannot substitute their own judgment. If a court sends an authorization back to the agency, it must give specific instructions and a deadline of no more than 180 days, and the authorization stays in effect during the fix. Lawsuits must be filed within 150 days of the final agency action being made public, and if there was a public comment period, only parties who submitted a substantive, unique, and timely comment on the issue they are suing about can bring the lawsuit.