FOIA requesters

Iowa State University cannot release research data about how a meat packaging company processes the controversial “pink slime” beef product because the processes are trade secrets, a district judge ruled.

The research a professor conducted for Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) at a university laboratory falls under the trade secrets exemption of the state Freedom of Information Act, Story County District Judge Dale Ruigh stated in an opinion released last month.

Individuals seeking records under the federal Freedom of Information Act can immediately sue agencies that miss the statute's deadlines for properly responding to a request, a federal appeals court reaffirmed Tuesday.

As part of a settlement agreement between the FBI and a Tennessee newspaper, the bureau must release documents and photos that are expected to confirm that famed civil rights photographer Ernest Withers was a confidential informant during the civil rights era. Withers died in 2007.

A Tennessee court has ruled that a private nonprofit athletic association is the equivalent of a government agency, making it subject to public records laws.

The (Nashville) City Paper filed a petition in the Chancery Court for Davidson County seeking access to information from the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, which had previously denied the newspaper’s request, arguing that it is not a public government entity.

Despite a judge recently modifying a gag order in the case of alleged theater shooter James Holmes, journalists are having a difficult time accessing records to report on the high-profile case.

“We get lots of tiny bits and pieces and have to paste these parts together to make sense out of what seems like a senseless mass shooting,” Denver reporter Rick Sallinger said.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion for summary judgment Wednesday in a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, opposing the release of documents regarding the CIA's use of “targeted killings.”

E-mail correspondence among school board members prior to the controversial closing of a public elementary school did not constitute secret meetings that violate Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the government may withhold certain records relating to the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques – including waterboarding – from public disclosure under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has denied a request to order the U.S. government to publicly release photographs and video under the federal Freedom of Information Act of the U.S. military raid that killed Osama bin Laden last May.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg accepted the CIA’s assertion that release of any photos and video of the body of Osama bin Laden – former leader al-Qaeda – would pose a major threat to national security, and that he would not overturn the agency’s decision to classify the records.