Ecological Rights Foundation v. United States Environmental Protection Agency

Background

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule updating its procedures for handling Freedom of Information Act requests. The rule centralized requests at the agency’s national headquarters, allowed the agency’s Administrator to make final decisions on requests, established a presumptive search cutoff date, permitted the agency to withhold records it internally deemed nonresponsive, and changed other regulatory language.

Ecological Rights Foundation and Our Children’s Earth Foundation sued in the Northern District of California. They alleged that the rule’s issuance without notice-and-comment procedures violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Freedom of Information Act. They also alleged that parts of the rule were unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious, and otherwise unlawful.

Two similar cases challenging the rule had been filed in the District of Columbia: one by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and another by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Environmental Integrity Project. The Environmental Protection Agency moved under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) to transfer this case to the District of Columbia, or alternatively to pause the case while the other proceedings continued. The plaintiffs had also filed a motion for summary judgment before the agency answered the complaint.

Transfer analysis

Both sides agreed that the case could properly be heard in either the Northern District of California or the District of Columbia. The court therefore considered which forum was more convenient and better served the interests of justice.

The court found that the possibility of coordinating or consolidating this case with the two District of Columbia cases was the strongest reason to transfer. Although the cases did not present exactly the same claims and facts, they substantially overlapped. All three challenged the rule’s promulgation and some of its substantive changes under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Freedom of Information Act. The cases would require courts to consider many of the same questions and the same administrative record. Keeping the cases in separate districts created a significant risk of inconsistent decisions and duplicative litigation.

The court also found that court-congestion statistics favored transfer. The plaintiffs’ choice of the Northern District of California weighed against transfer, but the court gave that choice less weight because the rule was created at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and applied nationally. The court concluded that the Northern District of California had no special local interest in the rule.

Witness convenience weighed somewhat against transfer, but the court gave it limited weight because the identified witnesses were connected to the plaintiff organizations and the case would likely be resolved through motions rather than a trial. Other considerations, including the courts’ familiarity with the law, party convenience, agreements, and compulsory process, were neutral or irrelevant. The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the Freedom of Information Act’s special venue provision applied because this case challenged the agency’s rulemaking, not the agency’s failure to produce requested records.

Ruling

Judge Richard Seeborg granted the motion to transfer. The case was transferred to the District Court for the District of Columbia. The order left it to the parties and the judges in that district to decide whether the case should be coordinated or consolidated with the two related cases. Because the transfer motion was granted, the court did not address the alternative motion to pause the case. The court did not decide the plaintiffs’ challenges to the legality of the agency’s rule.