June 13, 2008 —
In an important FOIA decision, Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington
has
ruled against the IRS in a case that in fact goes back to the mid-1970s.
The ruling on TRAC's February 11 motion requires the IRS to turn over thousands of pages worth of agency statistics, to stop redacting the tables it is producing right now, to produce data for which it claimed a spurious work product privilege, to produce data electronically, and to produce samples of other requested statistical information. Judge Pechman further denied the IRS's requests that the consent decree be modified, holding that the IRS was not in a position to request relief because it had blatantly violated her orders.
Click on one of the links below for additional information: