The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals halted a quest for FBI files on surveillance of Muslim communities in the U.S. A three-judge panel rejected a lower court ruling that general records including training manuals and guidelines could not be withheld under an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act. (Courthouse News Service, February 1, 2018, by Nicholas Iovino)
The ACLU of Northern California had sought the files that ran over 45,000 pages. In reversing the lower court, the panel’s opinion stated,
“In analyzing FOIA requests to law enforcement agencies for disclosure of investigatory materials, we have long held that the government need only show a ‘rational nexus’ between enforcement of federal law and a withheld document to invoke Exemption 7….But, we have not yet decided whether the same standard governs requests for more generalized records, such as training manuals and guidelines.
“We today hold that for such records, the government’s burden under Exemption 7 of demonstrating that withheld materials were “compiled for law enforcement purposes’ can be satisfied without linking the documents to the enforcement of a particular statute.” (Metropolitan News-Enterprise, January 2, 2018, by a Met News Staff Writer)