Campaign Legal Center v. DOJ - FOIA Postscript to Department of Commerce v. New York (Part III)
Bernard Bell, Yale J. on Reg., Notice & Comment Blog, Dec. 4, 2022
Can an agency properly invoke the deliberative process privilege to shield internal deliberations over a sham memo requesting that another agency take action, knowing that the recipient agency will use the request to hide the real reason for its contemplated action? Earlier this year, the D.C. Circuit answered in the affirmative. Campaign Legal Center v. DOJ, 34 F.4th 14 (D.C. Cir. 2022). This is the third in a series of three posts addressing Campaign Legal Center. Having discussed the D.C. Circuit’s dismissive treatment of a potential “government misconduct” exception argument (Part I), and then laid out the caselaw regarding that exception (Part II), this third post will provide my own analysis of the issue at the heart of the case.
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