Court: Private-account email can be subject to FOIA

Politico discusses CEI's victory in their FOIA case against the White House Office of Science and Technology with Marlo Lewis. 

After the free-market-oriented Competitive Enterprise Institute filed suit over a request for work-related emails sent to or from that private account used by Holdren, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruled last year that the government had no duty to search an email account that wasn't part of OSTP's official system.

But the three D.C. Circuit judges who ruled Tuesday all said Kessler was too rash in throwing out the suit and they agreed the case should be reinstated.

While the opinions in the case make no mention of Clinton or her private server, it seems evident that all three appeals judges involved are aware of the obvious analogy.

While today’s ruling is a major victory for government transparency, it’s stunning that it takes a court decision for federal employees to be held accountable to the law,” CEI senior fellow Marlo Lewis said. “The ‘most transparent administration in history’ has proven over and over that it has no intention of actually letting the American public know what it is doing. … Director Holdren is not the first agency head to be found using private email for his government work, but as we continue our legal battle in this case, we seek for this unlawful behavior to come to an end.”

Read the full article at Politico.