Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, will recuse himself for one year from lawsuits against the agency that he was involved in as the Oklahoma state attorney general or as part of the conservative Rule of Law Defense Fund.
Pruitt signed the recusal document on Thursday, and the memo was obtained by E&E News on Friday.
The list of cases from which Pruitt will recuse himself include a lawsuit over President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan and cases regarding the Clean Water Rule. He indicated that he will not recuse himself from cases in which Oklahoma only filed an amicus brief.
During his confirmation hearing in the Senate, Pruitt would not say definitively whether he would recuse himself from cases he had been involved in while serving as Oklahoma’s attorney general. At the time, he would only say that he would follow guidance from the EPA’s ethics office.
Though Pruitt will recuse himself from a long list of cases at the EPA, President Donald Trump has signaled he will roll back many Obama-era environmental regulations. Pruitt said that he would not step back from the rule-making process on the matters he listed in the memo.
