Small Business Challenges EPA’s Illegal Disclosure of Private Information
Last week the NFIB Small Business Legal Center filed a
brief in the Eighth Circuit Federal Court of Appeal in support of the American
Farm Bureau Federation and the National Pork Producers Council in their lawsuit
challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed disclosure of
sensitive information to environmentalists. EPA has collected information on
farmers and ranchers throughout the country, and now intends to release these
files under the Freedom Information Act. The information includes the GPS coordinates
for family farms, home telephone numbers, personal email addresses and even
information shedding light on the personal finances of small business farmers
and ranchers.
Our amicus brief argues that the proposed disclosure is
illegal under the Freedom of Information Act because it violates important
privacy protections. Further, we call out EPA for expending time, energy and
resources in an effort to collect this sensitive information through
back-channels without any lawful authority. For more on the case, Jarod Bona and
Aaron Gott of Bona PC explain:
“The case raises concerns for all business owners, who
often must give all sorts of private information to governments in complying
with regulations, seeking permits, and just to exist. That a federal agency can
use its vast resources to compile all that information—information that is
available only because other governments required those businesses to provide
it—and then hand it over to favored interest groups for strategic use against
those businesses betrays the nation’s privacy laws, the scope and purpose of
the Freedom of Information Act, fundamental fairness, and equal protection
under the law.”
To read more, check out Bona and Gott’s full
article here.
