CEI v. EPA

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CEI is suing EPA over its failure yet again to properly respond to Freedom of Information Act requests – this time, about EPA officials’ communications and meetings with lobbyists.

CEI’s Chris Horner sent two requests to EPA in late June and mid-July seeking correspondence between three high-ranking EPA officials (including EPA’s head) and various lobbyists, as well as visitor logs for meetings with the lobbyists. Although the legal deadline for responding has long since passed, EPA’s headquarters still has produced no records in response to either request, even though the requests are simple enough that EPA has admitted it won’t have to expend any billable time to locate the records.

It has produced only three trivial records from the EPA’s air quality office, and has not indicated when it will produce the remaining records. Nor has it disclosed, as the federal appeals court’s CREW v. FEC decision required it to do within 20 days, any of the following information mandated by FOIA: how many documents fall within CEI’s FOIA request, how many it will ultimately produce, and how many it intends to withhold as confidential under any exception to the Freedom of Information Act.