S3305-119

In Committee

CLEAR Act of 2025

119th Congress Introduced Dec 2, 2025

Analysis under review: This bill has generated analysis that may be too generic or incomplete. Clause-level evidence remains available below.

Summary

What This Bill Does

Limits repeated litigation over energy-project authorizations and tightens judicial review standards, timelines, and remedies for challenges to those approvals.

Who Benefits and How

Energy project sponsors and federal permitting agencies gain stronger protection against repeated or prolonged litigation over project authorizations.

Who Bears the Burden and How

Opponents of energy projects face tighter filing deadlines, narrower remand remedies, and stronger preclusion rules.

Key Provisions

  • Bars repeat litigation over the same energy project once an earlier case has been finally adjudicated.
  • Narrows judicial review so courts defer more to agencies and generally leave authorizations in effect during remand.
  • Imposes a 150-day filing deadline and comment-participation limits for many legal challenges.

Evidence Chain:

This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers.

At a Glance

What This Bill Does

Limits repeated litigation over energy-project authorizations and tightens judicial review standards, timelines, and remedies for challenges to those approvals.

Key Policy Areas

Energy, Government Operations

Primary Purpose

Limits repeated litigation over energy-project authorizations and tightens judicial review standards, timelines, and remedies for challenges to those approvals.

Policy Domains

Energy Government Operations

Main Provisions

Identified Gains
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
  • Energy project sponsors
  • Federal permitting agencies
Model: codex-gpt-5 | Version: bill_summary_v2 | Source: is

Contextual inference, no direct clause citation

Identified Costs
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
  • Opponents challenging energy project authorizations
Model: codex-gpt-5 | Version: bill_summary_v2 | Source: is

Contextual inference, no direct clause citation

Legislative Progress

In Committee
Introduced Committee Passed
Dec 2, 2025

Mr. Cotton introduced the following bill; which was read twice …

Dec 2, 2025

Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

Dec 2, 2025

Introduced in Senate

Stakeholder Effects

cui bono?

How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.

Energy
2 mentions across 2 clauses
+2 positive

Energy project sponsors

Government
2 mentions across 2 clauses
+2 positive

Federal permitting agencies

Environment
2 mentions across 2 clauses
-2 negative

Opponents challenging energy project authorizations

2/3
sections analyzed
Full impact breakdown

Bill Structure & Actor Mappings

Who is "The Secretary" in each section?

Domains
Energy Government Operations

We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.

Learn more about our methodology