Sierra Club v. United States Environmental Protection Agency

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 SIERRA CLUB, Case No. 20-cv-03472-JCS

Plaintiff,

ORDER REGARDING MOTION FOR

v. CLAWBACK AND SUMMARY

JUDGMENT

UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, Re: Dkt. No. 80 11 Defendant.

12 I. INTRODUCTION This case arose from Plaintiff Sierra Club’s request for documents from Defendant the Environmental Protection Agency (the “EPA”) under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). Most of the parties’ disputes have been resolved by the Court or by the parties’ themselves, and the EPA has produced a large number of documents to Sierra Club. Among those documents was a series of emails exchanged among an EPA employee, a White House official, and several individuals who work in government affairs—in other words, as lobbyists—for the petroleum industry, discussing plans to meet for drinks. The EPA inadvertently produced those emails without redacting all instances of the lobbyists’ names and email addresses. The only…