Today, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a Washington federal court's summary judgment in favor of the Navy in a Freedom of Information Act case.
The Plaintiff submitted a FOIA request for government records relating to the Naval Magazine at Indian Island in Puget Sound. The Navy disclosed about 1000 pages of records but did not release 81 documents, citing to two exemptions of the Freedom of Information Act.
Plaintiff brought suit and the Navy obtained summary judgment from the trial court. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision finding that the the records were exempt under the FOIA's Exemption 2 (exempting from disclosure matters that are “related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.”)
This exemption protects records which could be used to circumvent government regulations or those sensitive records designed for the agency's own internal use (assuming that they are particularly sensitive).
The Navy refused to turn over maps which denoted the blast radius around the Island based on the various types of munitions stored there. The Court found that to disclose the records posed a risk that the records would be used to circumvent the law. Therefore, the records were not required to be disclosed under FOIA.
Decision can be downloaded here.
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