Cause of Action’s Executive Director, Dan Epstein, joined experts in the open government field as they shared tools, tips, and tricks to make congressional staff more effective on the job. Learn more about the event here.
Download his presentation here: Transparency Tools Training
Read agency FOIA regulations
Are the docs you want already publicly available?
Be specific: This is not a discovery request
FOIA for FOIAs
FOIA for communications with Congress (because you can’t FOIA Congress directly)
Ask different agencies for the same type of documents
How do agencies define terms?
Ethical/practical considerations of using FOIA while in litigation with an agency
According to the Department of Justice:
“[T]here simply exists no statutory or other legal prohibition against using the FOIA to supplement civil, criminal or administrative discovery in pending cases.”
-DOJ, FOIA Update Vol. VI, No. 3 (1985)
Cause of Action and 13 other groups sent a joint letter to the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) urging it to investigate the unauthorized and abusive practice by administrative agencies of sending “administrative closure” letters in lieu of responding to proper requests for information. The Freedom of Information Act gives anyone the right to request documents from a federal agency but various administrative agencies are finding a backdoor way to close requests without producing documents. Specifically, after delays of months and, at times, years, FOIA officers are writing to requestors that unless the requestor provides certain information within a proscribed short period of time, the agency is going to close the request. The effect of such a closure is that if the requestor is forced to send a new request, it will go to the end of the line for processing (resulting in further delays of months to years). The coalition letter requests an investigation into this practice, and Cause of Action is hopeful that such an investigation will result in a directive to agencies to end this practice.
Read the letter here.
LIBRE Joins Litigation Regarding “Operation Choke Point”
Obama Administration Abuses Regulatory Regime
(Washington, D.C.) – Today the LIBRE Initiative Institute (LIBRE) filed an amicus brief in support of the Community Financial Services Association of America v. FDIC challenge to the administration’s Operation Choke Point (Choke Point). LIBRE filed the brief – which was written by the nonprofit government oversight group Cause of Action – arguing that the government abused its power and conducted Choke Point without transparency or accountability and without accounting for the Collateral damage that it has done to Hispanic businesses, their customers, or the communities they serve. Choke Point is an initiative quietly organized and implemented by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and other agencies. Banks and other financial institutions have been investigated and pressed to cut off financing to a range of businesses that the administration believes to be acting against public Interest . These include legal activities such as payday loans, tobacco, ammunition, fireworks, and many others.
This operation has received little public scrutiny, and was not publicly debated or analyzed for its impact on the targeted businesses, their customers or the broader economy. Questions have been raised regarding the administration’s decision to target a broad range of legal activities – rather than concentrating taxpayer dollars on fighting crime. Additionally, many of the businesses hurt by the operation provide access to Capital and services of particular value in the Latino community. This unilateral action has forced many enterprises to close – with a disproportionate impact on jobs and services in Latino communities nationwide. It is wrong for the administration to crack down on completely legal commercial activity – stripping consumers of market choice – through agency pressure applied to financial institutions rather than an open and transparent process.
Read the brief here.
Jorge Lima, Policy Director of The LIBRE Initiative Institute released the following statement:
President Obama continues to use unilateral executive action to push forward on a flawed policy agenda that is hurting the Latino community more than it’s helping. Wages are down and jobs are hard to find – but we continue to see the same policy prescriptions that have failed in the past. Now the administration is using its power to undermine industries that it deems detrimental, while ignoring the fact that it is unfairly punishing business owners and infringing upon the private prerogative of banks to evaluate business according to their models – ultimately limiting the choices available to individuals.
The federal government should stop trying to arbitrarily undercut or shut down businesses it doesn’t like, and allow for an open debate, with proper opportunity for comment and analysis, rather than wielding administrative power. We have seen what happens when there is no discussion of proposed policy alternatives with the unintended consequences of Obamacare. The president and his administration shouldn’t be so eager to repeat the same mistakes.
For interviews with a LIBRE representative, please contact: Brian Faughnan, 703-650-1100 or Steven Cruz, 703-650-1100.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is resigning after five-and-a-half years in the Obama administration. Despite Cause of Action raising the following concerns to the Department of Justice (DOJ) during Attorney General Holder’s tenure, here are four DOJ failures that Cause of Action hopes the next Attorney General would ensure the agency corrects:
Cause of Action is continuing to investigate improper White House review of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by asking agencies to produce their communications with the White House. We recently sued 12 agencies that have failed to provide a final response to our FOIA Requests. We submitted a FOIA request to The Department of Commerce (Commerce) asking for its communications with the White House on November 26, 2013. After eight months of waiting, Commerce responded on June 25, 2014 saying that there were no responsive documents.
Cause of Action received a supplemental response from Commerce 25 minutes later informing us to disregard the previous email and provided a new final response. The new response: “The responsive documents located in response to your FOIA request are being withheld in their entirety.” Commerce withheld 30 pages of documents in full, citing FOIA exemptions 5 and 6. By contrast, every other agency that has responded to our request provided documents with only some redactions and nothing withheld in full.
In less than 30 minutes, “no responsive documents” becomes 30 pages of documents “withheld in their entirety.” This is transparency in the “most transparent administration in history.”