December 31, 2018: In the closing days of 2018, Sierra Club secured a major victory in its ongoing campaign to bring transparency and accountability to the dealings of the many industry insiders that remain at EPA, even after Scott Pruitt's departure. The Club, represented by Environmental Law Program attorneys Elena Saxonhouse and Marta Darby, had sued EPA in federal court in San Francisco earlier in the year for failing to respond to four Freedom of Information Act requests. The requests sought email and calendar records of 25 political staffers, including Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler and other former industry lobbyists. When EPA still refused to commit to produce the requested documents in a reasonable timeframe, Sierra Club moved the Court to enter an order finding that EPA had violated FOIA, and ordering EPA to produce Sierra Club's priority documents on a rolling basis over the next 10 months (as opposed to the 4-year-timeframe that EPA had proposed). The Court sided with Sierra Club, noting the urgency of the Club's requests as they relate to the confirmation process for Wheeler, the ongoing regulatory rollbacks, and the potential conflicts of interest among the targeted employees.
The Court's order is significant not only for the 18-20,000 email records and 25 sets of calendars that will be produced to Sierra Club in 2019, but for its clear holding that an agency cannot use a purported lack of resources as an excuse for prolonged delay in processing FOIA requests. In addition, the pace of production ordered is far more aggressive than EPA has been willing to commit to on its own, and should serve as a helpful standard for other time-sensitive FOIA requests to the agency.
Read the official Sierra Club Press Release here, as well as this exclusive in the Washington Post.