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Court rejects national security exemption in FOIA requests

donal brown April 25, 2011

In a rare show of skepticism, a federal district judge found the argument of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) unpersuasive in claiming a national security reason for refusing to disclose records. The judge said the USTR “has not shown it likely that disclosing document 1 would discourage foreign officials from providing information to the United States in the future because those officials would have no basis for concluding that the United

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Loading up costs of public records requests defeats access

donal brown April 25, 2011

In a guest commentary in The Salt Lake Tribune, Brigham Young professor Joel Campbell says that a proposed new public record request law in Utah would hurt public access to records. “[The law]…would not only pay fees to cover the ‘actual cost’ of providing the records, but it also added new charges for overhead and administration. That would have undone Utah GRAMA’s current and narrowly drawn ‘actual cost’ provision, which is among the best in

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New Jersey transit worker gets job back after fired for buring pages of Quran at ground zero protest

donal brown April 25, 2011

A veteran New Jersey transit employee was reinstated in his job after he was fired for burning pages of the Quran while off duty in a protest over the Islamic community center near ground zero in New York City. Under the settlement, the man also got $25,000 for pain and suffering, back pay and legal fees. A Muslim advocate group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the man should not have been fired for exercising

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Pennsylvania: Federal appeals court rules man removed from meeting not deprived of free speech rights

donal brown April 25, 2011

A federal appeals court ruled that authorities acted lawfully when they ejected an activist from a County Council meeting. The appeals court upheld a lower court decision that the man was removed to restore order, not to silence him. The majority opinion said, “…we cannot find evidence in the record to support a reasonable inference that … [the mayor ejected the activist] from the March 20 council meeting because of animus toward him or his

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Michigan: Quran-burning pastor may sue for right to protest at Dearborn mosque

donal brown April 23, 2011

The Florida pastor who burned a Quran bringing on violent protests by Muslims in Afghanistan was briefly held by police and prohibited from holding a rally at a Dearborn mosque. Pastor Terry Jones says he plans to return next week to protest at City Hall on First Amendment grounds and  may file a lawsuit. The Dearborn mayor said that the right to free speech could not jeopardize public safety. -db From the Detroit Free Press,

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