Agencies increasingly turning down FOIA requests
By Tom Temin, Federal News Network, Feb. 24, 2021
Freedom of Information Act requests are on the rise. Rising faster are instances of federal agencies turning them down. Turns out, they’ve got quite a few perfectly legal reasons for stamping “Sorry, no dice” on FOIA requests. For a review, Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to the Director of Strategic Issues at the Government Accountability Office, Michelle Sager.
Read more here.
Department of Justice Sunshine Week Virtual 2021 Celebration
Dep’t of Justice, Office of Info. Pol’y, FOIA Blog (Feb. 24, 2021)
We invite you to join the Department of Justice for this year’s kick-off of Sunshine Week. On Monday, March 15 from 10am – 11am, the Department of Justice will hold our annual Sunshine Week event virtually. Established in 2010, this will mark the eleventh year of the Department’s event recognizing the importance of FOIA for government transparency and celebrating the efforts of those professionals dedicated to the success of their agencies’ FOIA administration. We invite all agency personnel and members of the public to join us for this year’s event, which will include an address from the Director of the Office of Information Policy highlighting recent initiatives and agency FOIA activities, as well as the Department’s annual Sunshine Week FOIA Awards Ceremony to honor and celebrate the work of dedicated FOIA professionals across the government.
Read more here.
Cause of Action Inst. v. Export-Import Bank (D.D.C.) — following in camera review, (1) affirming an agency’s use of the deliberative-process privilege to withhold certain internal records, such as property risk-management reports and communications with the Executive Office of the President about political nominees; (2) rejecting the use of the deliberative-process privilege to withhold portions of senior staff reports and materials provided to GAO; (3) rejecting the use of the deliberative-process and attorney-client communication privileges to withhold an internal email concerning the requester’s blog activity; (4) affirming the use of Exemption 6 to withhold White House email addresses; (5) remanding the majority of records to the agency for renewed motion on summary judgment, including portions of an email chain withheld as “non-agency records,” other records provided to GAO, and cybersecurity recommendations; (6) postponing consideration of the agency’s Exemption 4 claims; and (7) warning agency that in camera review called into question “whether the Bank has adequately complied with FOIA’s segregability mandate,” and otherwise highlighting multiple times the agency’s failure to account for records in its Vaughn index and its inaccurate description of records in its submissions.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Gellman v. DHS (D,D.C.) -- in case involving plaintiff’s request for records about himself, finding on renewed summary judgment that: (1) Office of the Director of National Intelligence properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to redact records and noting that agency was not required to disprove that redacted language was not later adopted as agency policy; (2) Office of Information Policy properly withheld draft statements to the media pursuant to Exemption 5, as well as email from public affairs official about how to respond to news article; and (3) OIP properly withheld certain news clips as “unresponsive” to plaintiff’s request even though they were were contained in compilations that included responsive items.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Groups press Biden to commit to transparency
Their letter asks the new president to reinvigorate FOIA and rein in government secrecy.
By Josh Gerstein, Politico, Feb. 22, 2021
On President Barack Obama’s first full day in office, he issued an executive order and two presidential memoranda urging greater transparency in government.
When President Joe Biden was sworn in last month, he signed 17 executive orders and other directives. None was focused on transparency.
Now, a coalition of advocates for more access to government information and deliberations are urging Biden to make such openness a higher priority and to reverse what they contend was a deterioration in public access to the inner workings of government under former President Donald Trump.
Read more here.
Merrick Garland, the nominee for U.S. Attorney General, stated in his opening testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that reading “the Freedom of Information Act generously” would be one of many norms “that will ensure the Department’s adherence to the Rule of Law.”
Ctr. for Investigative Reporting v. FBI (N.D. Cal.) -- finding that the FBI properly relied on Exemption 7(A) to withhold certain records pertaining to death of two American citizens in Papua Province, Indonesia, noting that the government has secured an arrest warrant and intends to prosecute the murder suspect once he is released from foreign prison.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
OIP Announces New Spring and Summer FOIA Training Dates
Dep’t of Justice, Office of Info. Pol’y, FOIA Post (Feb. 19, 2021)
Today, the Office of Information Policy (OIP) announced new dates for FOIA training during spring and summer 2021. As part of its responsibility to encourage agency compliance with the FOIA, OIP offers a number of training opportunities throughout the year for agency FOIA professionals and individuals with FOIA responsibilities. These courses have been designed to offer training opportunities for personnel from all stages of the FOIA workforce, from new hires to the experienced FOIA professionals or FOIA managers. Due to COVID-19 and physical distancing precautions, OIP will continue to offer virtual training sessions that will be taught in real-time by OIP instructors. We are pleased to announce these virtual training courses through July 2021, which are also available on OIP’s Eventbrite page.
Read more here.
FOIA Advisory Committee Meets on March 3
Nat’l Archives & Records Admin., OGIS FOIA Ombudsman (Feb. 17, 2021)
The next meeting of the 2020-2022 term of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee is on Wednesday, March 3 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET. This virtual meeting is open to the public and registration is required. Please register here by 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 28, 2021, to receive an email with instructions for accessing the meeting via WebEx. We also will livestream the meeting on the National Archives and Records Administration’s YouTube channel (with a slight transmission delay). We will monitor the chat function via WebEx and YouTube.
The Committee will hear about access to records in the legislative and judicial branches from Daniel Schuman, Policy Director at Demand Progress and Demand Progress Education Fund, and Michael Lissner, Executive Director at Free Law Project. The Committee also will hear updates from the four subcommittees: Process, Classification, Technology, and Legislation.
Read more here.