A government oversight group was hopeful Wednesday after arguing before the U.S. Circuit Court for D.C. that the Federal Trade Commission wrongfully denied requests for transparency.
Cause of Action called on the appeals court to overturn a 2013 decision that allowed the FTC to deny a Freedom of Information Act request on the grounds that the nonprofit was not media.
“We are encouraged by the court’s focus on [the] FTC’s selective document disclosure and by its recognition that steps are needed to ensure agencies do not take advantage of loopholes to deny web-based media FOIA disclosure …” said Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein.
He continued to sa that the “FTC abused its power by wrongly restricting FOIA” and “that digital media was entitled to the same treatment by government agencies as traditional newspapers.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Washington Post, NPR and the Daily Caller News Foundation supported the group as in court.
Between 2011 and 2012, Cause of Action filed three FOIA requests for information for an article and investigative report on the FTC’s regulation of social media authors and bloggers.
However, the FTC denied the requests, the group’s claim to be a news media and the fee waivers.
“By obstructing FOIA disclosure and by playing games with media status and fee waivers … [the] FTC has crippled transparency and obstructed accountability,” Epstein said in a press release.
Simultaneously, the FTC granted fee waivers to the AFL-CIO, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Marin Institute, according to the press release.
“[The] FTC’s desire to chill criticism appears to explain what occurred here,” Epstein said in the release. “Upholding FTC’s ‘weaponization’ of FOIA will empower agencies to selectively define what is and isn’t ‘media,’ thereby blocking transparency and significantly reducing the federal government’s accountability to all Americans.”
“[The] FTC’s conduct reflects a larger pattern of government games with FOIA,” the release said. It went on to cite a Competitive Enterprise Institute study that identified that the Environmental Protection Agency allowed fee waivers for 75 of 82 cases with politically favorable groups, but denied 14 of 15 requests by critics.
The oversight group “uses investigative, legal and communications tools to educate the public on how government transparency and accountability protects economic opportunity for American taxpayers,” according to its website.
A court decision is expected in two to three months.
