The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday became the first of President Trump's agencies to issue an order barring the agency from being drawn into court settlements that alter environmental outcomes to the liking of environmental and other special interest groups.

"The days of regulation through litigation are over," EPA chief Scott Pruitt declared in a statement. "We will no longer go behind closed doors and use consent decrees and settlement agreements to resolve lawsuits filed against the Agency by special interest groups where doing so would circumvent the regulatory process set forth by Congress."

Pruitt's order would also end the practice of paying out "tens of thousands of dollars in attorney's fees to these groups with which we swiftly settle," Pruitt added.

The litigation tool, commonly referred to as "sue and settle," was used with great success by environmental groups under the Obama administration to force a regulatory process behind closed doors, according to Pruitt. The Sierra Club, for example, used the legal tactic often as part of its "Beyond Coal" campaign program to force coal-fired power plants into early retirement.

It is a tactic that has served the environmental community well over the last decade. But EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt sought to change all of that on Monday through a new agency-wide policy to bar it from entering settlements where all affected stakeholders would be not be included in the final court-enforced settlement and consent decree.

Industry groups like the Chamber of Commerce have lobbied consistently against the practice of sue and settle, and Republicans on Capitol Hill have introduced legislation to confront the issue in recent years without much success.

It is "something a long time coming … and a very important day," Pruitt told reporters early Monday morning ahead of signing a memorandum directing the agency not to enter into sue and settle agreements.

"We are no longer going to be engaged in that practice anymore," he said. "What this sue and settle process has done is bypass the regulatory process altogether."

He called the practice "wrong," and said the agency is "the first agency to issue this directive in a memorandum" to challenge and stop abuse of the sue and settle process.

"It is a practice not unique to the EPA," but the number of cases brought to the agency to enter court-enforced settlements has placed it "in first place," Pruitt added.

"We are the first agency to take this action," he said, although Attorney General Jeff Sessions is "keenly interested" in engaging the issue of sue and settle across the government.

Pruitt said that "other agencies are taking notice as well."