Bill lets people skip Interior's hearing and go to court.
S. 4787 — FEAT Act · Filed by Mike Lee (R-UT) · 5 cosponsors · Introduced Jun 15, 2026 · Hearing held
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What it does
The bill allows people who want permits from Interior to skip Interior's hearing process. They can go straight to court instead. The court will review Interior's choice from scratch. The court will not give special weight to Interior's knowledge. This removes a step meant to solve disputes inside the agency.
Who it affects
People and companies that need Interior permits can now go to court. Oil, gas, mining, timber, and real estate companies may get a second chance to win approval in court. Interior may find it harder to enforce rules and manage public lands if courts reject its choices.
One thing to notice
Courts will review Interior's choices without giving weight to Interior's knowledge of resource rules and nature laws.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
5 cosponsors: 5 Republicans.
- Jun 15, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jun 15, 2026 — Referred to Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources”
- Sep 16, 2026 — Hearing held · Congress.gov: “Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Hearings held”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 2 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $164,250 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 6 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 41% of bills with any report.
Mike Lee, who sponsored the bill, received $239,000 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Hidden Level, Inc. — $110,250 in 1 report
- Earthjustice — $54,000 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- permit — Official permission from the government to do something, like drill for oil or cut timber.
- hearing process — Interior's own court-like process to settle disputes before they go to court.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,199 characters) on Sep 18, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,358 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-19.
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