Court Orders EPA to Release PMNs in TSCA Transparency Case

The D.C. District Court has ordered EPA to provide Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) premanufacture notices (PMNs) in litigation challenging the agency’s new chemical review procedures as insufficiently transparent.

The lawsuit, brought by five environmental groups, alleges that EPA fails to timely publish complete notices of receipt of PMNs and applications for test marketing exemptions (TMEs).  The groups also allege that the agency routinely violates TSCA by failing to make health and safety studies, safety data sheets (SDSs), and other information in PMNs publicly available, including information claimed as confidential business information (CBI) that facially does not qualify as CBI.

In August 2024, the court partially granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel the administrative record.  However, EPA argued that the agency did not consider unredacted PMNs when it assembled public files, and that their contents would therefore shed no light on the agency’s decision-making.  The plaintiffs countered by arguing that the court already rejected those arguments when it partially granted the motion to compel and that the unredacted PMNs are necessary to determine whether EPA withheld test data or health and safety studies.

In an order filed December 24, 2025, the court agreed with the environmental groups.  “The court finds that Plaintiffs have carried their burden of showing that the unredacted versions of PMNs were ‘before the agency’ when the EPA assembled public files, notwithstanding the agency’s assertions that it did not rely on unredacted PMNs,” the court held.

The order requires EPA to produce public versions of the PMN files by January 23, 2026, and unredacted versions under a protective order by March 23, 2026.

The case is Environmental Defense Fund v. Zeldin, No. 20-cv-00762 (D.D.C.).  A previous post on the case can be found here.