Judicial Watch is taking the Environmental Protection Agency to court in an effort to pry loose information about several “environmental justice” grants doled out by the agency.
The watchdog group is seeking copies of the EPA’s proposals and awards for environmental justice grants delivered in 2014 and 2015, and said it hasn’t been provided with any documents yet.
“This is a simple records request and the fact that the Obama EPA ignored it for years tells you the agency has something to hide,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a press release.
The environmental justice program seeks to measure the environmental impact of industry and development as it relates to minority populations, but conservatives have complained that the effort funds progressive groups that are only interested in slowing down any development at all through lawsuits and rulemaking.
For the watchdog group, it’s another opportunity for the new administration to provide greater transparency by legally releasing older information that was held back in FOIA requests by the Obama administration. But those hopes haven’t been met so far.
Just two weeks ago, Judicial Watch was in court seeking to force the State Department to locate missing emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure. Even though the Trump administration had the reins on a case that originated in the Obama administration, lawyers for the State Department indicated they would follow the same course as they had previously, and ask for a complete dismissal of the case.
