In a disappointing unanimous decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can ignore public record requests from non-residents.

This is one of the most regressive, backward rulings the U.S. Supreme Court has issued on access laws for some time. Two reasons make this particularly alarming:

• The court continues to look at public records as commodities, like lumber or turnips. The bulk of the case came down to whether the Virginia law harms business interests for those buying and selling information from outside the state. The court completely ignored the 76-page amicus brief submitted by the Reporters ...

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The U.S. Supreme Court decided unanimously today that the state of Virginia had the power to restrict public records access to residents of that state. Virginia limits freedom of information requests to its own residents and certain media outlets.

The case reached the court after Rhode Island resident Mark J. McBurney and California resident Roger W. Hurlbert sued Virginia for blocking access to public documents that an in-state resident could obtain.

They contended that the state’s practice violated the Constitution’s Privileges and Immunities Clause and its Commerce Clause. The court ruled that Virginia’s FOIA law  “does ...

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By Jonathan Ellis, Argus Leader

Here’s a novel idea: If you take money from the federal government, the public should know how much you’re taking and for what.

That basic premise is at the heart of the Argus Leader’s lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture. The paper filed suit in 2011 seeking to force the department to turn over records of how much each business that participates in the food stamp program has earned from food stamps over the last five years. The lawsuit would force the disclosure of those records from more than 300 ...

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A federal court in Manhattan yesterday dismissed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit involving both The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union, who each sued the United States Department of Justice over records regarding the targeted drone killing of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan and Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman in the fall of 2012. The records in question included a memorandum from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which outlines the legal justifications for the killings.

ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a release on the ACLU website: “This ...

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Every day, on average, a city vehicle or two hits something in this corner of Virginia. Sometimes it’s a mailbox. Sometimes it's another car. Sometimes it's a person. Often the offending vehicle is a school bus. But sometimes it’s a garbage truck, or a police car, or a fire truck. Those accidents cost localities millions of dollars a year, and sometimes they injure or kill people. Throughout the 1990s, I covered civil courts in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area, a region with about 1.6 million people. Often I would find lawsuits against cities and schools. Usually ... Read more ...