Agriculture your username January 13, 2021 The Environmental Defense Fund, Montana Environmental Information Center, and Citizens for Clean Energy, Inc. have filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its administrator for enacting a rule that the agency allegedly did not have the authority to make. Mondayâs Administrative Procedure Act (APA) complaint, filed in the District of Montana, claims that the EPAâs âsweepingâ new rule published and made effective on Jan. 6, will âcrippleâ the agencyâs ability to protect public health and the environment by limiting which scientific evidence it can consider. The complaint explains that the rule will profoundly transform the ways in which the agency may consider scientific evidence by prohibiting it from relying on research for which the underlying data is not publicly available. The filing further explains that because âlegal and ethical rules prevent making data involving human subjects available to the publicâor available through ârestricted accessââthe rule hinders consideration of exactly the sorts of epidemiological and other studies that are most critical to the development of public-health standards.â