The public's access to USDA animal welfare records is crucial for protecting animals, and is also required by the law. Without these records, advocates cannot effectively hold accountable roadside zoos, puppy mills, circuses, research laboratories, and other institutions that exploit and harm animals.
On August 9th the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in favor
of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the nation's preeminent legal advocacy
organization for animals, in an appeal challenging the dismissal of a
lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for
removing tens of thousands of animal welfare records from the agency's
website.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund leads a coalition - including Stop Animal
Exploitation NOW!, Companion Animal Protection Society and Animal Folks -
that filed the lawsuit in February 2017.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California, which dismissed the lawsuit in
August 2017, and remanded the case back to District Judge William H. Orrick
to determine whether the USDA's database removals were legal.
"The public's access to USDA animal welfare records is crucial for
protecting animals, and is also required by the law. Without these records,
advocates cannot effectively hold accountable roadside zoos, puppy mills,
circuses, research laboratories, and other institutions that exploit and
harm animals," says Animal Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Stephen
Wells. "We look forward to proceeding with this lawsuit, and ultimately
restoring the USDA records as required by law."
The lawsuit argues that the USDA's decision to remove the records previously
posted in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) database
violates the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The removed documents include records relating to violations of the Animal
Welfare Act (AWA) at thousands of research laboratories, roadside zoos and
puppy mills across the country. The coalition used these records to advocate
for stronger animal protection policies, confront the USDA over inadequate
regulation of substandard facilities, supply evidence for law enforcement
action and build legal cases against egregious violators.
FOIA requires that agencies make available in a reading room important types
of documents, including final agency opinions, orders, and frequently
requested records. Reading rooms - formerly actual rooms with reading
material filed for review - have been replaced by "electronic" reading
rooms, in the form of website and document databases, like the APHIS
databases that USDA took down.
The coalition's appeal argued that FOIA authorizes courts to order agencies
to comply with the reading room requirement - and that asserting otherwise
as the district court did is effectively, and contrary to law, to erase the
reading room requirement from the statute.
The organizations are represented pro bono by Margaret Kwoka, Associate
Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
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