On December 20, 2019, the President signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, which contains several FOIA provisions:
Section 550, which protects certain victim disclosures under the “Catch a Serial Offender Program” and expressly identifies Exemption 3 as the basis for withholding.
Section 835, which modifies 10 U.S.C. 2361a concerning a now-completed panel report on DOD Acquisitions Regulations, provides that the “working papers, records of interview, and any other draft work products generated for any purpose by the Section 809 Panel shall be covered by the deliberative process privilege exemption under paragraph (5) of section 552(b) of title 5, United States Code.”
Section 5726(e) requires certain energy information “shared by or with the Federal Government or a State, Tribal, or local government” to be “withheld from the public public, without discretion, under section 552(b)(3) of title 5, United States Code, and any provision of any State, Tribal, or local law requiring the disclosure of information or records.”
Hat tip to founding OIP director Richard Huff, whom we recently profiled, for notifying us about these FOIA items. Mr. Huff noted that Section 835 “still leaves open a question as to whether it would satisfy the ‘reasonable harm’ test,” and that Section 5726(e) “is one of the very few provisions of which I am aware that extends federal supremacy over information shared with a state or locality.”