The Ecological Rights Foundation (“EcoRights”) recently won a significant victory in litigation against the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). The case will help to ensure that FOIA continues to serve its intended purpose—as stated by the US Supreme Court—to “pierce the veil of administrative secrecy and to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny.” Dep’t of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 361 (1976).
Background
In 2017 and 2018, EcoRights submitted a series of FOIA requests to EPA seeking documents relating to: (1) the Trump Administration's order to prevent EPA personnel from speaking publicly on certain topics, and the review of EPA reports and studies by Trump administration political appointees; (2) efforts by the Trump Administration to investigate EPA employees for perceived disloyalty to former President Trump; (3) efforts by the Trump Administration to slash EPA's workforce; and (4) various controversial activities of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
Following EPA’s failure to provide the documents by FOIA’s deadlines, and EPA’s unlawful withholdings of substantial quantities of records, EcoRights brought litigation against EPA in January 2018. In July 2020, EcoRights filed a motion for summary judgment, seeking to have the United States District Court for the Northern District of California rule that EPA had violated FOIA.
Court’s Ruling and EPA’s Document Production
On June 3, 2021, the Court ruled in favor of EcoRights. The Court had requested, and the parties had provided, a limited set of 30 exemplar documents that illustrated each side’s contentions (i.e., 10 from EcoRights showing unlawful withholdings, and 20 from EPA showing what it claimed were proper withholdings). After removing one document that EPA incorrectly submitted, the Court agreed with EcoRights that 28 of the 29 documents were unlawfully withheld by EPA.
This sweeping victory led EPA to finally provide the documents it had improperly withheld. Importantly, the Court gave EPA until June 17, 2021 to provide a new release of documents that took account of the legal principles set forth in the Court’s order, i.e., that no longer withheld records that the Court’s order made clear were improper withholdings from the list of 29 exemplars. On June 17, 2021, EPA made a new release of records. And EPA followed-up with yet another release of records on June 24, 2021. These releases contain tens of thousands of pages of newly-released records that EPA had been improperly withholding. This represents a significant win for the public oversight purposes of FOIA.
EcoRights encourages all interested members of the public to review the newly-disclosed records and to make use of them for the benefit of the public. The records can be accessed in their entirety through the FOIAOnline platform at the following link:
The new releases have a Release Date of 06/17/2021 and 06/24/2021.