Sierra Club v. EPA

Sierra Club filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to compel it to respond to four requests for agency records submitted between June 2017 and January 2018. Sierra Club said the requests were for communications between seven new employees in the Office of the Administrator and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt or third parties and were in connection with four “troubling practices,” including “[i]nappropriate and possibly illegal use of EPA staff time to covertly lobby for the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and other policy changes” and “[p]olitically motivated changes to factual information about climate change on EPA’s website.” Sierra Club alleged that each of the seven new hires “lacks prior experience or expertise in environmental protection and instead has a strong connection with anti-EPA organizations, companies, or politicians.”