The Biden EPA purged industry voices from its advisory committees and gave their slots to compromised scientists, the suit alleges.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing a lawsuit from a former advisory member who is accusing the Biden administration of violating federal law by purging industry representatives from two key advisory panels and unlawfully filling the spots with scientists who are financially tied to the administration through multi-million dollar research grants from the EPA.
Stanley Young, who served on the Science Advisory Board (SAB) during the Trump administration, has filed a suit months after EPA Administrator Michael Regan removed more than 40 members from the SAB and seven members from the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) in March. At the time, Regan claimed the move would free the committees from industry influence and restore science-based advisers.
The suit, filed by the Jones Day law firm on Young’s behalf in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that the committees are now “unfairly balanced — both in terms of points of view and the functions the committees are required to perform — because they lack a single member affiliated with regulated industries.”
Six of the seven members appointed to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) under the Biden administration are university professors, while the seventh is a state official as required by the Clean Air Act, the suit says.
Members include Elizabeth Sheppard, a professor at the University of Washington and chair of the CASAC, who who has been associated with more than $60 million in EPA grants as a principal investigator. Other members include Michelle Belle, a professor at Yale University associated with $29 million in EPA grants and Mark Frampton, professor emeritus at the University of Rochester Medical Center who is associated with more than $36 million in grants, according to the suit.
Of those appointed to the SAB, more than nine members have been associated as principal investigators with millions of dollars worth of EPA grants. The five members associated with the largest grants are Sheppard; Jonathan Samet of Colorado School of Public Health ($28 million); David Allen of University of Texas ($18.5 million); Daniel Stram of University of Southern California ($16.7 million); and Tami Bond of Colorado State University ($5.6 million).
The suit argues that Regan’s purge violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), a measure enacted in 1972 to make certain that advice offered by committees is “objective” and accessible by the public.
It adds that in violating FACA, the EPA also ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Industry representation is essential because industry inputs inform the advice of both the Board and the Committee, and the committees’ advice and the resulting EPA actions significantly affect numerous regulated industries,” the suit says.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who served under the Trump administration, filled the advisory panels with industry-based representatives; He tripled the number of industry and consulting firm scientists on the SBA and reduced the number of academic scientists by half.
The suit argues that the committees had an appropriate balance of consultants from universities, nonprofits and regulated industries before the recent purge.
“In its haste to eliminate all traces of industry from its advisory committees, EPA ran roughshod over FACA and its obligation to engage in reasoned decision-making,” the suit says.
Of 47 officials who have been appointed to the SBA and seven who have joined CASAC, not a single person is affiliated with a regulated industry, the suit claims. It asks that all committee activity cease until a “balanced membership” is achieved.