By Arthur Coon (August 4, 2017, 11:07 AM EDT) -- On July 7, 2017, the California Supreme Court filed its 69-page opinion, written by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and joined by five other justices, in Friends of the Eel River v. North Coast Railroad Authority, et al. (2017) __ Cal.5th ___. The court held that the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995 (ICCTA; 49 U.S.C., § 10101 et seq.) does not exempt the application of the California Environmental Quality Act to a railroad project undertaken by a state public entity, defendant North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA), on a rail line also owned by that entity. The court acknowledged that the ICCTA's federal regulatory scheme would preempt a state's imposition of environmental regulation such as CEQA on a privately owned railroad. That is because settled federal law holds the ICCTA preempts a state's imposition of "environmental preclearance requirements" that have the effect of preventing or delaying the operation of a privately owned railroad. But the court also held that, as applied to govern the conduct of subdivisions of the sovereign state, the CEQA process constitutes an act of "self-governance" and not preempted "regulation" within the meaning of the ICCTA....