United States Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club
2021 United States Supreme Court case / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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United States Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club, Inc., 592 U.S. 261 (2021), was a Supreme Court of the United States case involving whether the use of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request can be used to access documents from a U.S. agency that are protected under the deliberative process privilege exemption, in this specific case, draft biological opinions made and reviewed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) prior to a final rulemaking decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) related to impacts on endangered aquatic species, requested by the Sierra Club. The Court ruled in a 7–2 decision in 2021 that the government does not have to disclose "draft biological opinions" involving potential threats to endangered species, even though the drafts reflect an agency's final proposal.[1] The ruling limits environmental groups' ability to obtain government documents using the FOIA.[2]
United States Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club | |
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Argued November 2, 2020 Decided March 4, 2021 | |
Full case name | United States Fish and Wildlife Service, et al. v. Sierra Club, Inc. |
Docket no. | 19-547 |
Citations | 592 U.S. 261 (more) |
Argument | Oral argument |
Case history | |
Prior | Sierra Club, Inc. v. United States Fish & Wildlife Serv., 925 F.3d 1000 (9th Cir. 2019); cert. granted, 140 S. Ct. 1262 (2020). |
Holding | |
The deliberative process privilege protects from disclosure under FOIA in-house draft biological opinions that are both predecisional and deliberative, even if the drafts reflect the agencies' last views about a proposal. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Barrett, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh |
Dissent | Breyer, joined by Sotomayor |
Laws applied | |
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) |