It has been over a year since Scott Pruitt's declaration that he "would not agree that [carbon dioxide created by human activity i]s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," contradicting the conclusions posted on the website of the agency he leads, the EPA. Immediately following this, the
nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for "any EPA documents that
support the conclusions" Pruitt made on television. After the EPA did not act
on this
request, PEER brought a case against the agency.
The EPA has maintained that Pruitt's statement was a personal opinion and
did not reflect the agency's position. However, the court made it clear that, regardless of whether or not that is the case, personal opinion "may... guide
the
agency's regulatory efforts and, to the extent any agency records provide
the
basis for such public statements, those agency records are a perfectly
proper
focus of a FOIA request."
The court issued its ruling last Friday, requiring the EPA to produce the
records that the nonprofit requested through its FOIA
request. Any non-
exempt records must be "disclose[d] promptly... on a rolling basis" by July
2nd, 2018, and the agency must explain why documents were withheld by
July 11th. The ruling was a result of two failures by the EPA. First,
it was
unable to sufficiently explain why the search for these records "would
be overbroad and unduly burdensome."
The court found the agency's explanation
too general, merely contending that
it "would not even know
where
or how to begin searching for documents for
such a broad, sweeping request" and it
"would require EPA to spend countless hours researching and analyzing a vast trove of material."
Second, the EPA based its defense on the idea that it was being forced to
"evaluate whether a particular document supports or refutes, or even relates
to, [PEER]'s proposition concerning the effect of human activity on climate change." The court rejected this claim, holding that the FOIA request only required the EPA to find and provide "documents that explicitly draw a
conclusion on that subject."
