EXCLUSIVE — A prominent conservative legal firm with close ties to the Trump administration took aim on Wednesday at a little-noticed Environmental Protection Agency rule from the Biden administration that it says created an improper, preferential fast-track for certain public records requests under the banner of “environmental justice.”
America First Legal, the firm founded by President Donald Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller, filed a major Freedom of Information Act request and a companion petition for rulemaking challenging the EPA’s 2022 decision to let requesters claim a so-called “environmental justice–related need” as a basis for expedited processing. The group says that carveout opened a political pathway to faster access to federal records, contradicting FOIA’s requirement that agencies handle requests in a content-neutral manner.
Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office to rid agencies of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, including any “environmental justice” offices and services. However, the FOIA rule remains on the books, meaning requesters can still claim an EJ-related need to secure expedited processing.
According to a now-defunct EPA webpage from 2021, the agency described environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, [or] national origin.” It further explains that “[f]air treatment means no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies.”
AFL’s accompanying FOIA request seeks a detailed accounting from the EPA on how the EJ standard has been used. The conservative legal group is asking for the total number of FOIA requests the agency receives, how many seek expedited treatment, how many are granted, how many invoke environmental justice as justification, and the identities and affiliations of requesters approved under that provision.
The firm argues that those records are necessary to show whether the agency created a two-tier system for requesters by allowing EJ-based claims.
Filed along with its FOIA request, AFL’s rulemaking petition presses the EPA to repeal the EJ language entirely and restore the pre-2022 version of its FOIA rules. It states that environmental justice has become an “unsupported and overly subjective” standard, as it no longer has an executive-order mandate behind it since the Trump administration rescinded the Biden-administration-era directives that required agencies to integrate EJ considerations across their work.
AFL contends that the EJ provision cannot be squared with FOIA’s traditional “compelling need” criteria and creates unequal access by letting select communities jump ahead of others without demonstrating an imminent harm or urgent public interest need.
Leaving the rule intact, the firm argues, allows outside groups to exploit a loophole that no longer reflects binding federal policy and was never compatible with FOIA’s neutrality requirements.
TRUMP CALLS ON MEXICO TO SOLVE WATER AND SEWAGE CRISIS PRESENTING ‘TRUE THREAT’ TO US
The group’s filings aim to force the EPA to close that gap before more requests are filed under what it views as a legally vulnerable and now defunct standard.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the EPA for comment.
