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On June 15, 2020, in a 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court held in United States Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association that the National Park Service protections for the Appalachian Trail do not cover the land under the trail, and therefore, construction on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) may proceed, pending granting of all the necessary permits. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan signed onto the dissent.

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The Court’s decision stated: “Because the Department of the Interior’s decision to assign responsibility over the Appalachian Trail to the National Park Service did not transform the land over which the Trail passes into land within the National Park System, the Forest Service had the authority to issue the special use permit.”

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The brainchild of conservationist and planner Benton MacKaye, the Appalachian Trail was created by private citizens almost a century ago and is the world’s longest footpath dedicated solely to hiking. It stretches nearly 2,200 miles from Maine to Georgia and traverses fourteen states, allowing more than three million visitors each year to experience the scenic beauty, natural wilderness, and cultural landscapes of America’s Appalachian Mountains.

In January 2018 the U.S. Forest Service issued a permit authorizing Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline to cross beneath the trail. A federal court’s ruling reversed that decision, but the Supreme Court has just held that the permit can go through, allowing a natural-gas pipeline to cross the trail on national forest lands for the first time in history.