The U.S. Supreme Court on March 9 agreed to hear the Trump administration’s bid to throw out environmentalists’ challenge to the U.S. Air Force’s practice of detonating waste explosives on a beach in Guam.

The justices granted the petition in Department of the Air Force v. Prutehi Guahan without comment in an unsigned order. No justices dissented.

Guam, located in the Western Pacific Ocean, is an unincorporated U.S. territory that is part of the Mariana Islands. The island territory serves as an anchor for U.S. military operations in the region.

The dispute centers on the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law that requires federal agencies to generate statements assessing the environmental impact of proposed major federal actions.

In May 2025, the Supreme Court limited the reach of NEPA in a case called Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County.

The high court ruled 8–0 that the federal environmental review process need not take into account the broader impact of a project on the environment, and that enough had already been done in the case involving an 88-mile rail line in Utah to satisfy legal requirements.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that NEPA requires only that the environmental impact of the project itself—as opposed to the downstream impact of a project—needs to be investigated.

“NEPA is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock,” Kavanaugh said. “The goal of the law is to inform agency decisionmaking, not to paralyze it.”

Since 1982, the Air Force has used Tarague Beach, a restricted-access site, to dispose of dangerous munitions such as propellants and tear gas. The beach, located not far from Andersen Air Force Base, is a nesting habitat for endangered turtles and is atop an aquifer that supplies most of the island with drinking water.

In 2021, the Air Force asked regulators in Guam to renew its permit to carry out open burning and open detonation of hazardous waste at the beach without seeking an environmental review. Prutehi Guahan, an environmentalist group in Guam, sued to challenge the permit renewal, arguing the Air Force had failed to comply with NEPA by not procuring an environmental impact assessment.

A federal district court in Guam dismissed the case, ruling Prutehi Guahan did not have standing to sue.

Standing refers to the right of someone to sue in court. The parties must show a strong enough connection to the claim to justify their participation in a lawsuit.

Later, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, voting 2–1 to revive the lawsuit. The appeals court agreed with the group that the Air Force needed to carry out an environmental impact assessment before it filed to renew its permit.

The Air Force argued in its petition filed with the Supreme Court that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling was incorrect because the application to renew the permit was not a final agency action subject to immediate judicial review.

Submitting the permit renewal application did not “mark the consummation” of the Air Force’s decision-making process, which still required the involvement of the Guam Environmental Protection Agency and input from the public, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said.

The renewal request was “merely … [a] step along the way,” he said.

Prutehi Guahan had urged the Supreme Court not to take up the case, arguing the Ninth Circuit’s decision was correct.

Moreover, federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, “already have procedures in place that take as a given that NEPA applies when environmental permits are needed,” the group said in a brief.

Because NEPA is currently “in flux,” there is “substantial reason not to rush in” to this case. Congress is now looking at amending NEPA and that “may shift the landscape,” the brief said.

The Supreme Court should allow the legislative process to play out, the brief added.

An attorney for Prutehi Guahan said the group is looking forward to getting its day in court.

“For years, the Air Force has chosen to dispose of its munitions stockpile by exploding bombs on our clients’ ancestral lands and threatening most of Guam’s drinking water supply,” said David Henkin, deputy managing attorney of Earthjustice’s Mid-Pacific regional office.

“Federal law gives our clients a pathway to force the Air Force first to take a hard look at the consequences of that choice and consider less environmentally destructive ways to get the job done,” he said in a statement.

U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre told The Epoch Times the department declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.

No date has yet been scheduled for oral argument in the case.

Reuters contributed to this report.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared March 10, 2026, in The Epoch Times.