Today, a group of environmental and science organizations, represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s removal of public information from climate and environmental justice federal agency websites.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Sierra Club, Environmental Integrity Project, and California Communities Against Toxics joined the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s removal of critical environmental justice tools like EJScreen and the Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool (CEJST). Until the deletion, both websites were widely used by regulators, academics, and advocates to identify communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution and climate change. The vital tools also track burdens related to climate change, energy, health, housing, legacy pollution, transportation, water and wastewater, and workforce development.
In addition, the lawsuit challenges the removal of other important environmental, climate, and energy justice tools, including the Department of Energy’s Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool and Community Benefits Plan Map; the Department of Transportation’s Equitable Transportation Community (ETC) Explorer, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Future Risk Index.
Researchers and many nonprofit organizations regularly use these tools to educate and advocate for policies or agency actions that would address the disproportionate harm overburdened communities bear.
UCS has used the tools in reports showing that commercial sterilizers emitting ethylene oxide in the U.S. are disproportionately polluting communities of color, low-income communities, and non-English language speaking communities; looking at whether federal infrastructure investments in California were flowing to communities historically underserved, underinvested in, and overburdened by pollution; and identifying critical infrastructure exposed to disruptive flooding in communities at a disadvantage based on historical and ongoing racism, discrimination, and pollution. UCS’ “Community Guide to Cumulative Impacts,” which provides information for people seeking to protect neighborhoods from cumulative chemical and pollution harms, also relied on disappeared federal data.
“The public has a right to access these taxpayer-funded datasets,” said UCS President Gretchen Goldman. “From vital information for communities about their exposure to harmful pollution, to data that help local governments build resilience to extreme weather events, the public deserves access to federal datasets. Removing government datasets is tantamount to theft.”
“The removal of these websites and the critical data they hold is yet another direct attack on the communities already suffering under the weight of deadly air and water,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous. “Simply put, these data and tools save lives, and efforts to delete, unpublish, or in any way remove them jeopardize peoples’ ability to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live safe and healthy lives. The Trump administration must end its efforts to further disenfranchise and endanger these communities.”
“The agencies’ actions represent an attempt to sell out the health of Americans and the environment, and also to deny access to the information that allows people to advocate for change,” said Zach Shelley, an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel for the groups. “These resources were developed for public use, and the government has a duty to keep them available. Stripping the public’s access to these resources is part of an unlawful attempt to undermine key environmental protections.”
“Removing public information from websites creates dangerous gaps in the data available to communities and decisionmakers about health risks from industrial pollution,” said Jen Duggan, Executive Director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “Pulling down EJScreen from the web obscures the real impact of toxic releases on low-income communities and communities of color from big polluters like oil, gas, and petrochemical operations, which is pretty ironic coming from an administration that claims to champion transparency.”