|
Appeals court dismisses cheney suit on energy bill { May 10 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051000599.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051000599.html
Appeals Court Dismisses Cheney Suit
Administration Not Required to Divulge Energy Meeting Records
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 10, 2005; 2:57 PM
A federal appeals court today dismissed a long-running lawsuit that had sought to force Vice President Cheney to turn over records of closed-door meetings his office held in 2001 to craft the administration's energy policy. The decision was a major legal and political victory for the White House.
The unanimous ruling accedes to the Bush administration's argument that forcing the executive office to produce details of internal discussions about how it shapes policy is unnecessarily intrusive and violates the president's constitutional powers.
In separate lawsuits filed five years ago, which were later joined as one, Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club claimed that members of large energy corporations and industry groups effectively became members of Cheney's energy task force and helped write the administration's policy that is now before Congress.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded today the two groups had failed to show that the task force itself was made up of people other than federal officials. Therefore, the court said, the government watchdog organization and the environmental advocacy group could not prove the vice president had a duty to disclose the membership and the notes of those task force meetings. The opinion cited the declarations of two senior administration officials as key to their decision.
"The only individuals the President named to the (task force) were federal officials; only federal officials signed the final report," Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote for the court. He noted that one of Cheney's deputy assistants for energy policy, Karen Knutson, reported in an affidavit that industry members did participate in smaller stakeholder meetings but these "were simply forums to collect individual views rather than to bring a collective judgment to bear."
The decision today by the full court for the District of Columbia Circuit is unusual for two reasons, according to law professors and attorneys involved in the case.
First, it's unanimous, an atypical result for a court whose members hold a wide spectrum of views on government regulation and the breadth of executive powers. Second it accepts largely as fact the assertions of two senior administration officials, without allowing the opposing side to challenge or question them.
The legal campaign to reveal the details of how Cheney's energy task force operated has had a complicated history. First, a federal district court judge rejected several of the suit's claims but said he would allow the plaintiffs to seek some documents from the vice president's office about the energy task force. The government eventually appealed to the court of appeals, which ruled in a divided opinion in September 2003 that the White House could possibly protect the materials from public view, but the administration needed to do so by citing executive privilege, a step it had not taken.
The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which last June sent the case back to the appeals court. The high court found the district court judge's original plan for allowing the groups to seek documents about the energy task force was overly broad, and it also explicitly directed the appeals court to consider "the weighty separation-of-powers objections" of the government and to reexamine whether the groups' complaint should be dismissed.
David Bookbinder, a lead attorney on the case for the Sierra Club, said today's appeals court decision keeps the public in the dark about White House operations. He said the two groups will decide in coming days whether to appeal the decision.
"As a policy matter, we see the Bush administration has succeeded in its efforts to keep secret how industry crafted the administration's energy policy," he said. "As a legal matter, it's a defeat for efforts to have open government and for the public to know how their elected officials are conducting business."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
|
|
