A federal appeals court shuttered an EPA plan meant to increase transparency around chemical information protected as trade secrets.
A Friday opinion out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacates the Biden administration’s attempt to boost transparency in an often tight-lipped industry via a rule increasing the reporting requirements for chemicals granted confidential business information, or CBI, status under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
It’s a win for the coalition of trade groups, which argued the rule doesn’t address a situation in which companies further down a supply chain submit confidential information without knowledge of another company’s CBI claim.
That makes the rule “unlawful to the extent it allows a downstream entity reporting on a chemical substance by accession number and without knowledge of the underlying specific chemical identity to waive confidentiality for that specific chemical identity,” Senior Circuit Judge Harry Edwards wrote for the unanimous, three-judge panel.
