Q. Are meeting records of a city-owned utility in Arkansas subject to state's FOIA law?
A. Yes. See Opinion No. 2000-129 of the Arkansas Attorney General. Please note, however, that only residents of the State of Arkansas may make FOIA requests to state and local agencies.
Senators, Let Us Read Your Letters
By Alexis Coe, New York Times, Oct. 28, 2015
“DEAR Ms. Coe,” an archivist at Marquette University, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s alma mater, wrote in an email, “I regret to inform you that all post-1946 correspondence is sealed for the lifetime of McCarthy’s daughter.” The archivist pasted a link to the collection’s finding aid before concluding, “She has not responded to any inquiries on this matter.”
I was trying to gain access to the senator’s papers for a book project. I’ve worked in lots of government archives, and while the bureaucracy can be a hassle, I usually find what I need. Not this time: Short of suing Senator McCarthy’s daughter or Marquette, I have no real means of recourse.
That’s because the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to the legislative branch. When Congress enacted the F.O.I.A. in 1966, it was after the executive branch’s records, and tailored the law to fit its needs. (Not that the executive branch has done a great job: According to the Center for Effective Government’s 2014 F.O.I.A. Access to Information Scorecard, only eight out of 15 government agencies earned “passing grades.”)
Read more here.
An amendment offered by Senator Leahy that would have removed a FOIA exemption in the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 was rejected by a 59 to 37 vote today.
Hajro v. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Servs. (9th Cir.) -- reversing district court's ruling that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has a "pattern and practice" of violating FOIA response deadlines.
Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.
The director of the National Security Archive's "Freedom of Information Project," Nate Jones, will lead a two-hour workshop on November 4, 2015, on how to file FOIA requests to the federal government. The workshop is free of charge and will take place at 6:00 pm at George Washington University's Gelman Library, 2130 H Street NW, Washington, DC, Room: 702. For more information, please contact GW's Gelman Library at gelman@gwu.edu.
Our Children's Earth Found. v. Nat'l Marine Fisheries Serv. (N.D. Cal.) -- ruling that: (1) the agency conducted an adequate search and that it was not required to submit declarations from each employee who participated in the search; (2) a low-level employee's "draft chart and summary" sent to senior employee was withheld appropriately pursuant to the deliberative process privilege; (3) the agency established that it had released non-exempt, reasonably segregable factual information from certain records, but that an 11-page document could not be withheld in full under the attorney-client privilege merely because the document had been sent to an agency attorney for review; (4) the agency appropriately used search cut-off dates based upon when its principal subject matter expert initiated searches, but noting that "a better policy is the search start date of each individual [subject matter expert]"; and (5) plaintiff was entitled to declaratory relief (and limited injunctive relief) as a result of agency's pattern and practice of failing to meet FOIA deadlines.
Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.
Q. Can I submit a FOIA request to a public utility in Connecticut?
A. I believe public utility records are subject to Connecticut's FOIA, though I am not aware of any reported court decisions. Certain utility records, however, are not required to be disclosed. For example, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 7-232a provides that a municipal utility may withhold any "commercially valuable, confidential or proprietary information" from public disclosure under FOIA. Additionally, municipal utilities may withhold records "which identify or could lead to identification of the utility usage or billing information of individual customers, to the extent such disclosure would constitute an invasion of privacy." Conn. Gen. Stat. § 16-262c.
National Archives Hit With Lawsuit Over Clinton Emails
By Alana Goodman, Washington Free Beacon, Oct. 21, 2015
A conservative group is suing the National Archives to turn over details about its review process of Hillary Clinton’s emails, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
The National Archives reviewed 1,246 Clinton emails last spring that State Department officials had previously determined were “personal” and should be withheld from the public. The Archives said last May that it agreed with State’s assessment that none of the messages were related to official business.
However, Citizens United, a nonprofit filmmaking group, has been pressing the National Archives for more information on its review process. The organization filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, after the agency failed to respond to a public records request submitted in June.
Citizens United has requested “any and all correspondence, schedules, memoranda, attendee lists, and any other records related to the planning, attendance, and methodology” used during the review.
Read more here.
Gahagan v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (E.D. La.) -- rejecting agency's argument that an "I-826" form that was released to plaintiff with unmarked redactions was not responsive to plaintiff's request, and ordering agency to submit a revised Vaughn index to account for the withholdings; further finding that the agency's declaration was admissible because the declarant had requisite personal knowledge about the processing of the request.
Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.
Windham v. Dep't of Hous. & Urban Dev. (D. Mass.) -- concluding that the agency performed a reasonable search in response to plaintiff's request for records concerning JP Morgan Chase's mortgage loan on plaintiff's home.
Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.