Description: Action to compel EPA to disclose senior officials' external communications.
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Sierra Club v. EPA
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 09/18/2017 Complaint Download Complaint filed. Sierra Club Filed FOIA Lawsuit Seeking EPA Officials’ External Communications. Sierra Club filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against EPA alleging that the agency failed to respond to four FOIA requests for communications between senior EPA officials, including Administrator Scott Pruitt, and outside people and organizations. Sierra Club also requested calendars for the EPA officials. Sierra Club said it sought the records “to shed light on secretive and potentially improper efforts by Mr. Pruitt and his core political team to nullify critical, lawful EPA regulations and policies.” The complaint alleged that “Mr. Pruitt and his inner circle of political staff at EPA have apparently been implementing secretive and closed-door policies that imprudently reduce transparency about the agency’s operations and activities,” and that EPA had left the public without access to information previously publicly available, including by removing from its website “formerly prominent information about climate change—a phenomenon that, the scientific consensus warns, gravely impacts public health and the environment, but that tends to pressure Mr. Pruitt’s supporters in the fossil fuel industry to reduce carbon emissions.”