U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia said “the defendant’s duty under the [Freedom of Information Act] is limited to producing documents in its possession at the time FOIA request was made.”
The administration said Federal Labor Ombudsman Pamela Brown, whose office under Interior, shredded the documents requested by Teresa Kim, the legal counsel of Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos.
These documents included an estimated 20,000 census forms gathered from nonresidents in the commonwealth.
The administration said Brown’s destruction of the census records is “potential violation of the Federal Records Act.”
The administration argued that Brown should have disclosed the destruction of the documents in a more timely fashion.
But according to the judge, “the defendant claims that the information was transferred to Excel spreadsheets prior to the destruction of the originals.”
The judge added that while the Federal Records Act does require agencies to retain certain documents, the FOIA does not impose a document retention requirement on agencies.
“The plaintiff’s concerns would therefore more appropriately be addressed in an action separate from the FOIA request,” the judge said.
“The plaintiff correctly points out that courts have occasionally sanctioned an agency for deleting relevant documents in FOIA litigation. Yet, in those cases, the destruction occurred after the FOIA request was filed…. Here, the destruction of documents occurred nearly five months before the FOIA request was even submitted.”
The judge added, “Consequently, although it is unfortunate that the documents are no longer available, discovery in this FOIA action is not appropriate” because the documents no longer existed.
On her “Unheard No More” blogsite, human rights advocate and former Rota teacher Wendy Doromal said the lawsuit “is seen by many as a witch hunt against…Brown since the [administration] officials knew that the documents sought in the case do not exist.”
