The Supreme Court gave open government a significant victory by reversing decades of practice in discrediting a prominent interpretation used by government agencies to reject Freedom of Information Act requests.
The Navy had tried to use an FOIA exemption for records “related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency” to reject a request for data showing where damage might occur in Puget Sound if explosives were detonated there by accident or intentionally. In writing for the 8-1 majority, Justice Elaine Kagan rejected the Navy’s argument that “personnel rules” could be almost any procedure followed by its employees. -db
From Politico, March 7, 2011, by Josh Gerstein.