The Seattle Times sued the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for 521 pages of its investigation of alleged sexual assaults by at least six members of the 2018 state champion Eastside Catholic High School football team, in King County Court.
Read moreA federal court in Washington ruled that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence properly withheld certain documents relating to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election that had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act by a Buzzfeed reporter and government transparency nonprofit director.
Read more
Many U.S. holding cells along the Mexican border were less than half full, even empty, during an unprecedented surge of asylum-seeking families from Central America, newly unsealed court documents show, raising questions about the Trump administration’s claims that it had to make people wait in Mexico because it didn’t have the means to accommodate them.
Read moreThe New Mexico Department of Game and Fish was obligated to disclose the names and email addresses of everyone who applied for a hunting or fishing permit pursuant to a citizen’s public records request, an appeals court in the state ruled. The state argued disclosure of the information threatened the privacy of residents and could open hunters up to harassment.
Read moreCalifornia’s Department of Justice cannot withhold records related to officer-involved shootings, use of excessive force and other police misconduct, the First District Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday.
Read moreMichael Brodheim, a graduate student in public administration, sued the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for information on the racial makeup of prisoners who apply for parole, in San Francisco Superior Court.
Read moreA federal court in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies sued by the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Knight First Amendment Institute for records relating to the intelligence community’s “duty to warn” journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered and dismembered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
Read moreThe National Veterans Legal Services Program sued the Department of Defense in federal court, claiming it illegally prevents the public from inspecting published decisions by discharge review boards and military records boards.
Read moreWildEarth Guardians sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in federal court for information on its attempt to “consider designating more desert federal public lands in Southern California for energy development.”
Read moreOffices of individual legislators are “agencies” under Washington’s Public Records Act and subject to its general disclosure mandate, the state’s Supreme Court ruled. However, the state’s Senate, House of Representatives and Legislature are not “agencies” and are subject to a narrower disclosure mandate.
Read more
The California Department of Justice defended its withholding of police misconduct files before a panel of three state appellate justices Thursday, insisting that compliance with a landmark transparency law would place undue strain on agency resources.
Read more
Washington state lawmakers must share their personal correspondence, drafts of bills and schedules under the state’s Public Records Act, the Evergreen State’s high court justices ruled Thursday.
Read more
First Amendment advocates have escalated efforts to force California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra to comply with public records law, filing a petition in state court Thursday demanding his office reveal the identities of law enforcement officers involved in legal settlements.
Read moreAfter a February 2015 explosion and chemical release at an ExxonMobile refinery in Torrance, California, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Board made hundreds of requests for information from the oil company. A federal court improperly determined that five of those requests were unenforceable, the Ninth Circuit ruled.
Read more
Nearly two months after a Democratic-led House committee initiated an investigation into the White House Office of Management and Budget’s hold-up of security assistance to Ukraine, the panel reported the documents they received show a pattern of abuse in the apportionment process.
Read moreCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive sued Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in federal court, claiming he illegally refuses to document State Department policies, decision and essential transactions, actions that are “directly related to President Donald J. Trump’s violations of the Presidential Records Act.”
Read more