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David Snyder

Victory in the Ninth Circuit for FAC and for Government Transparency

David Snyder August 25, 2017

  The First Amendment Coalition today secured an important victory in its long-running fight with the U.S. Department of Justice to bring to public light legal memos analyzing the use of drone strikes to kill American citizens abroad. In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit held that FAC is entitled to have the government pay FAC’s attorneys’ fees for its five-year legal battle with DOJ over the release of the so-called

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FAC Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Protect Core Political Speech

David Snyder August 9, 2017

The First Amendment Coalition today filed a “friend of court” brief in the United States Supreme Court, urging that court to review and reverse a decision by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals that punished a political candidate for speech that should have been protected under the First Amendment. The West Virginia court imposed the draconian punishment of a two-year suspension on Judge-Elect Stephen O. Callaghan, ruling that a campaign flyer issued by Callaghan,

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Joint Statement from FAC and EFF on DOJ Leaks Investigations

David Snyder August 4, 2017

Jeff Sessions’ Statement About Leak Investigations Raises Deeply Disturbing Issues For Journalists, Transparency Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement today that the Department of Justice has tripled its number of “active leak investigations” in the past six months, and that DOJ is “reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas” raised serious red flags for journalists, their sources, and proponents of transparency. The Obama administration was more aggressive in prosecuting leaks than any White House in modern times, bringing

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Memo to Future Historians of the Trump Presidency: Good Luck. You’ll Need It.

David Snyder August 4, 2017

BY DAVID SNYDER —Tucked into a February 13 Washington Post article about internal chaos at the White House is a stunning sentence, slipped in almost as an aside: White House “[s]taffers, meanwhile, are so fearful of being accused of talking to the media that some have resorted to a secret chat app — Confide — that erases messages as soon as they’re read” (emphasis added). The fact that the White House is permanently destroying records

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FAC to California Court of Appeal: The Public Can’t See What No Longer Exists

David Snyder July 25, 2017

FAC recently filed a “friend of court” brief in a California Court of Appeal case addressing an issue of critical importance to the public’s ability to obtain records under the California Public Records Act: should a CPRA requester be required to get a court order—an injunction—to prevent the government from destroying records? The clear answer is “no.”  If the CPRA stands for anything, it is the idea that the government has a duty, at an

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