WASHINGTON — Five days after the new head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommended the end of a 15-year-old finding that greenhouse gas emissions threaten public health and welfare, the Environmental Defense Fund sued the agency.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in a Washington, D.C., federal district court, the environmental nonprofit said the Trump administration must release the information it used to recommend reversing the so-called endangerment finding that requires the EPA to take action under the Clean Air Act to curb emissions.

Without the finding, the EPA no longer has the legal authority to regulate emissions from vehicles, electricity-producing power plants and other sources of pollution.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s recommendation to the Trump administration was “undertaken in secrecy, is deeply cynical and will hurt Americans already experiencing severe harms due to climate change,” EDF Associate Vice President for Clean Air Strategies, Peter Zalzal, said in a statement. “The public has a right to know why Administrator Zeldin — the head of the agency charged with protecting the public from the harms of climate change — has instead chosen to trample the science and do the exact opposite.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that directed the EPA to submit a report on the legality and continuing applicability of the endangerment finding.

The EDF said it filed the lawsuit after it did not receive the requested records on the Trump administration’s plans for the finding through a Freedom of Information Act request. The suit seeks to force the public release of the requested data.