Defenders of Wildlife v. U.S. Department of the Interior

Defenders of Wildlife filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking to compel a response to requests for documents from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management about plans for fossil fuel development on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The complaint alleged that oil and gas development would threaten the environment and that “threats would be compounded in an area that is already ground zero for climate change – the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate as the rest of the planet.”