The Spirit of Openness

US District Rudolph Contreras has ruled that the CDC policy of deleting emails when staff leave is likely unlawful.

Yeah, pretty much.

Trying to bury the bodies?  (Literally)

The CDC has likely been violating federal law for years by systematically deleting lower-level employees’ emails, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Gee, ya think?

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras came in a lawsuit brought by a legal group allied with former President Donald Trump and was accompanied by an order forcing the public health agency to immediately halt the erasures.

“The Court concludes that CDC’s policy and practice of disposing of former employees’ emails ninety days after the end of their employment is likely unlawful,” Contreras wrote in a 36-page opinion.

Contreras, an Obama appointee, found that the agency had been employing a records-retention policy that had not been approved by the National Archives. That policy led the agency to delete lower-level employees’ emails 90 days after their departure from the agency, rather than the three-to-seven-year retention required by standard National Archives procedures.

The group that filed the lawsuit, the, "America First Legal Foundation," (AFL) is a virulently bigoted  and highly partisan group, it was founded by Stephen Miller (יִמַּח שְׁמו), but on this issue they are correct.

Even for lower level employees, the swift deletion of these records runs counter to the spirit, and likely the letter of, of the federal Freedom of information act, and NARA policies in particular.

It doesn't matter if this is a journalist, or in the case of the, "America First Legal Foundation," an attempt to harass CDC into suppressing facts based research and instruction regarding the LGBTQ community.

Specifically, they were requesting the emails of the authors of a paper titled, "LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools: A Self-Assessment Tool." The obvious goal here is to use this to intimidate the authors as well as any school that has received the documents.

I am concerned about this, but I am more concerned that the CDC will cover up its role in the mismanagement of the Covid epidemic, and if that happens, then we will be equally unable to address something like Bird Flu or Monkey Pox.