Ecological Rights Foundation v. EPA

An environmental advocacy organization filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in the federal district court for the Northern District of California seeking to compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to produce instructions issued to EPA employees since President Trump’s inauguration about speaking publicly about their work or about review of EPA work by political appointees. The organization submitted its FOIA request on February 1, 2017 and alleged that EPA had failed to issue a final determination on the request. The complaint alleged that the documents sought were “crucial” because, among other reasons, they would “reveal the impact of partisan politics on the agency’s priorities, operations, and implementation, all of which have consequences for imperiled wildlife, catastrophic climate change, and public health in communities across the country.”