Anne Gorsuch Burford

Anne Irene McGill Gorsuch Burford ( ; April 21, 1942 – July 18, 2004), also known as Anne M. Gorsuch, was an American attorney and politician. Between 1981 and 1983, under President Ronald Reagan, she was the first woman to serve as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Her son is sitting Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Neil Gorsuch.

Early life and education Born Anne Irene McGill in Casper, Wyoming, Gorsuch grew up in Denver, where she attended St. Francis DeSales High School.

During three consecutive summers, she took classes in Spanish at the National University of Mexico. She studied at the University of Colorado Boulder, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961 at the age of 19. She then attended the University of Colorado Law School where she received a Juris Doctor degree in 1964 at the age of 22; she became the youngest woman admitted to the Colorado Bar at the time.

EPA Administrator

Gorsuch based her administration of the EPA on the New Federalism approach of downsizing federal agencies by delegating their functions and services to the individual states. She believed that the EPA was over-regulating business and that the agency was too large and not cost-effective. During her 22 months as agency head, she cut the budget of the EPA by 22%, reduced the number of cases filed against polluters, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and facilitated the spraying of restricted-use pesticides. She cut the total number of agency employees, and hired staff from the industries they were supposed to be regulating. Environmentalists contended that her policies were designed to placate polluters, and accused her of trying to dismantle the agency.

Thriftway Company Thriftway Company, a small oil refinery in Farmington, New Mexico, asked Gorsuch for a meeting to discuss the regulations limiting lead content of gasoline, the program under Section 211 of the Clean Air Act designed to reduce the amount of lead in gasoline in annual phases, and to receive relief from the standard.

Superfund In 1982, Congress charged that the EPA had mishandled the $1.6 billion toxic waste Superfund by taking certain inappropriate and potentially illegal actions including withholding disbursements in order to affect a California political campaign. When Congress demanded records from Gorsuch, she refused and as a result became the first agency director in U.S. history to be cited for contempt of Congress.

Hugh Kaufman, an EPA employee, leaked documents to Congress. Gorsuch denied any wrong-doing.

The stand-off ended in late February 1983, when Richard Hauser, the White House deputy counsel, confirmed one or more Reagan Administration officials had in fact reported to the White House that they had heard Gorsuch say at an August 4, 1982, luncheon that she was holding back more than $6 million in Federal funds to clean up the Stringfellow Acid Pits toxic waste site near Los Angeles to avoid helping the Senate campaign of former Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a Democrat.

The White House then abandoned its court claim that the documents related to this incident could not be subpoenaed by Congress because they were covered by executive privilege and the EPA turned the documents over to Congress. Gorsuch resigned her post effective March 3, 1983, citing pressures caused by the media and the congressional investigation.

EPA legacy Looking back at her tenure several years later, Gorsuch expressed pride in the downsizing done under her watch and frustration at the program backlogs and lack of staff management skills that she encountered while at the helm of the agency. She described the post as a "nothing-burger", and both the House and the Senate passed non-binding resolutions calling on President Reagan to withdraw the appointment. Ultimately, Gorsuch chose not to accept the position.

After leaving government service, she wrote a 1986 book about her experiences titled Are You Tough Enough? She then worked as a private attorney in Colorado until her death. In the oral argument for the Loper Bright Enterprises case her status as EPA administrator at the beginning of the Chevron case was mentioned. Justice Gorsuch voted to overrule the Chevron decision.

By Gorsuch's later account, her son Neil, who was then 15 years old, was furious with her when she resigned under pressure from the EPA. "You should never have resigned," he told his mother. "You didn't do anything wrong. You only did what the president ordered. Why are you quitting? You raised me not to be a quitter. Why are you a quitter?"

In 1983, Gorsuch married Bureau of Land Management head and rancher Robert F. Burford, with whom she had previously served in the Colorado House of Representatives. A divorce from Burford was pending when he died in 1993.