Climate Info Purge Case to Test Bounds of Government Records Law

A recent Freedom of Information Act suit over the purge of climate information from US Department of Agriculture websites offers courts an opportunity to define how government records must be indexed as the Trump administration overhauls agency agendas, scholars say.

The Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York alleges the agency illegally scrapped essential webpages without public notice last month, after USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee ordered staff to archive or publish “any landing pages focused on climate change.”

The agency did so without explanation, and there’s no record of how many pages, climate mapping tools, or policy guides were taken down, the group said in a suit filed in federal district court in New York.

Changes to an agency’s online rhetoric are normal under any presidential administration change, but the USDA’s wholesale removal of climate content takes on a “fundamentally different character” from previous transitions, said Margaret Kwoka, a professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

“This set of website blackouts have been different, both in the sheer scope but also in encompassing not just research findings but also government policies,” she said. “One of the most important functions of government websites is to inform the public about how government operates.”

In a statement, the USDA said it’s reviewing projects “to ensure they are aligned with the President’s directives and that they are focused on supporting farmers and rural communities, not far-left climate projects or DEIA initiatives.”

In the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, organizations have sued several agencies, including the Department of Government Efficiency and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over other online dataset and language purges.

The uptick in FOIA litigation continues a trend seen in Trump’s first term, but the farmers’ suit adds a couple of twists.

Typical FOIA suits seek to access otherwise unpublished agency records, but the farmers’ action is unique in asking a court to restore information that was already publicly available.

And FOIA requires agencies to make statements of general policy and “general course” available to the public in both physical agency reading rooms and official online portals. The farmers’ suit now opens these “reading room” provisions to judicial review.

“This lawsuit, and perhaps those that are in the pipeline, may be a chance for courts to decide how FOIA affirmative disclosure requirements are enforceable,” Kwoka said.

Digestible Data

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which oversees the court where the farmers filed their suit, previously ruled that a group seeking to require an agency to maintain records online had standing to sue.

But the D.C. Circuit, home to a number of agency challenges, held that the proactive disclosure requirement is more aspirational, with the only remedy being information requests under the law.

In this case, which looks to restore accessible presentations of highly technical data like the US Forest Service’s “Climate Risk Viewer,” courts also could set standards for how the government must aggregate and present facts.

The tool distills several layers of complex measurements like temperature projections, precipitation patterns, sea level rise estimates, and extreme weather event probabilities into easy-to-read color-coded maps.

Alejandro Paz, a web monitoring analyst with the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, said the government has produced many studies and information on climate change, but current FOIA case law lacks protections for data tools that make such science digestible for the general public.

“Even if you don’t delete the underlying, original raw data, you still need ladders to bring that information to wider audiences,” Paz said. “Otherwise it’s just hard to act on it.”

Needed Resources Defense

Environmental law watchers say the farmers have a strong case for reinstating climate language on the USDA site.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act earmarked $19.5 billion to support the agency’s conservation programs, including ones aimed to reduce soil erosion and improve ground water levels. What these initiatives are and how farmers can apply is archived online, but no longer available on a government site.

Wiliam Buzbee, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said as long as statutes directing agencies to publish information and appropriating funds to do so are in effect, the government either must keep such content available to the public or publish a notice of removal.

“An agency can’t simply remove them and effectively make their legal commitments invisible,” said Buzbee, who directs Georgetown’s Environmental Law and Policy Program. “That’s fundamentally against the regulatory rule of law.”

The farmers say the USDA website purge denies access “to resources they need to advocate for funds they are owed and for the continued survival of programs on which they rely.”

The US Supreme Court has upheld similar arguments, holding that the executive branch can’t scrap regulations or programs without considering how entities rely on such government action.

Government information about crop survival programs and conservation funds are critical as prolonged droughts, record high temperatures, and increased natural disaster risks drive mass crop failure and force new planting norms, the farmers say.

“You’re going to see an acceleration of these risks and this volatility in agriculture, and you need to make this information available to farmers, producers, and buyers to make better decisions,” said Francsico Martin-Rayo, CEO and co-founder of the agricultural commodities tracking platform Helios.

Commodities markets are recognizing that global warming is accelerating faster than previous estimates, and the US needs informed growers to curb the increasing likelihood of food insecurity, he said.

“The more information we can make available to people across the supply chain, the more people can mitigate some of those risks,” Martin-Rayo said.

The farmers are represented by Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

The case is Ne. Organic Farming Ass’n of N.Y. v. USDA, S.D.N.Y., No. 1:25-cv-01529.