EPA is planning to ax a public records provision that granted expedited processing for marginalized communities.
By Kevin Bogardus, E&E News, Oct. 16, 2025
EPA is preparing to jettison one of its last vestiges of the Biden administration, a rule that sped up Freedom of Information Act requests for marginalized communities burdened with pollution.
As part of President Donald Trump’s sweep of diversity programs across the federal government, the agency is planning to ax a provision added to FOIA regulations during the previous administration. That measure granted expedited processing for requests that showed an “environmental justice-related need” for records pertaining to areas suffering from adverse health and environmental impacts.
The movement to provide relief to polluted places, often occupied by people of color and low income, has become verboten during the Trump administration. The president signed an executive order on his first day back in office to rid agencies of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs, including any “environmental justice” offices and services.
Matthew Tejada, former EPA deputy assistant administrator for environmental justice, said ending the FOIA provision would cut off another avenue for ordinary people to access their government.
“Making information requests harder to achieve both further pulls down a veil of secrecy obscuring what this administration is actually up to inside of our nation’s government while simultaneously ensuring that everyone but the most privileged in our country have few to zero means of engaging our government in a meaningful way,” said Tejada, now senior vice president for environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Rescinding the rule fits in with a larger pattern at EPA during the Trump administration. This year, the agency canceled grants classified as DEI and closed its environmental justice office, where staff received reduction-in-force or layoff notices.
“Since day one, the Trump EPA has been crystal clear that the Biden-Harris administration shouldn’t have forced their radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” said agency spokesperson Carolyn Holran in a statement.
EPA is already behind some deadlines on the repeal.
The agency was supposed to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking in July and a “Final Action” this month, according to the administration’s latest regulatory agenda. As of Thursday, visitors to EPA’s FOIA public access link can still ask to expedite their requests based on environmental justice.
EPA’s statement didn’t say when the regulation would be finalized and whether it would have a public comment period, as happened with its proposed rule more than two years ago.
“The government-wide Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions represents a snapshot in time, and completions dates are always subject to change,” Holran said.
EPA doesn’t often grant expedited processing under FOIA. In fiscal 2024, the agency sped up 15 requests that sought faster treatment while it denied 293 others, according to its annual report.
Allan Blutstein, a FOIA lawyer for pro-Republican research firms since 2015, opposed the environmental justice provision when it was first issued and now backs its rescission. He urged repeal of the measure in a direct message sent in February to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency team at EPA.
Blutstein said the regulation “effectively tilts the playing field in favor of certain individuals based on demographic factors, creating a form of identity politics within the FOIA process.”
He noted requests could still receive expedited processing in other ways under the public records law.
“Keep in mind that requests about pollution may still qualify for expedition under the ‘compelling need’ standard, and nothing — beyond considerations of fairness — prevents the EPA from interpreting that standard broadly in a different administration,” Blutstein said.
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