Statement: USDA Reverses Course, Commits to Restore Purged Climate Webpages in Response to Farmers’ Lawsuit

From the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

Late last night, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reversed course and committed to restore climate-focused webpages purged from its websites after  Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY), NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), and the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

Resources purged from USDA websites include information on climate-smart farming, accessing federal loans, forest conservation, and rural clean energy projects. USDA erased entire climate sections from the U.S. Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service sites, including information helping farmers access billions of dollars for critical conservation practices. It also disabled interactive tools, such as the U.S. Forest Service’s “Climate Risk Viewer,” a “one-stop shop for climate-related geospatial data” with over 140 data layers. 

Shortly after filing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs moved the court for a preliminary injunction, which sought a court order requiring USDA to restore the removed webpages and preventing USDA from taking down additional climate-related information.

Days before that motion was set to be heard in federal court, USDA reversed course. In a letter filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, USDA now says that it “will restore the climate-change-related web content that was removed post-inauguration” and that it “commits to complying with” federal laws governing its future “posting decisions.” USDA also says that it has begun restoring climate-related webpages and expects to substantially complete the restoration process in approximately two weeks.

Learn More, Read the Complete Statement

See Also: Farmers Sued Over Deleted Climate Data. So the Government Will Put It Back (via The NY Times)

Filed under: Data Files, News, Preservation