Public Advocacy Group Sues OFCCP in Connection with EEO-1 FOIA Requests
Laura Mitchell, Nat'l Law Rev., Mar. 8, 2018
[. . .]
On February 26, Public Citizen filed suit in Washington D.C. District Court claiming that OFCCP improperly denied its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information on who is looking into Employer EEO-1 data.
[. . .] Typically when we see FOIA requests involving OFCCP and EEO-1 reports, the requests are seeking release of EEO-1 data for specific employers.
Interestingly, Public Citizen’s lawsuit is not based upon accessing the substantive information contained in the EEO-1 Reports rather, it is seeking information on who else is submitting FOIA requests to try to access employer EEO-1 data and for what purposes these other parties are seeking the information. In this case, OFCCP partially denied the Plaintiff’s FOIA request based upon its supposed policy of withholding information regarding “open” (ongoing) FOIA requests:
“OFCCP advised that, as a matter of policy, it withholds all records related to “open” FOIA requests on the theory that they fall within the scope of FOIA exemption 7."
Read more here.