DOJ's Cautious Return To Supplemental Enviro Projects

On May 5, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland lifted the U.S. Department of Justice's ban on negotiating supplemental environment projects, or SEPs, with defendants as a part of settlements of alleged violations of federal environmental laws in civil and criminal judicial cases.

While the Trump administration limited, and then prohibited, the use of SEPs to settle civil and criminal environmental enforcement cases, the DOJ's new SEP guidance aims to restore past practices that had been in place for decades.

Yet the process and delay around this announcement suggest that SEPs may be limited under the Biden administration. In this article, we discuss the key points of the DOJ's new SEP policy.