ICM Registry, LLC v. U.S. Department of Commerce

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• finding that emails containing agency employees' opinions on public relations were subject to the deliberative process privilege
• noting that the deliberative process privilege “disappear[s]” only where “[t]he very discussion [sought to be protected] ... was an act of government misconduct”
• finding that courts only applied the exception in cases where “[t]he very discussion . . . was an act of government misconduct” and “evidence of a serious breach of the responsibilities of representative government”
• requiring a showing of “extreme” misconduct because “[i]f every hint of marginal misconduct sufficed to erase the privilege, the exception would swallow the rule”
• relying on decisions that discussed the government misconduct exception in non-FOIA contexts and decisions that opined on, but declined to apply, the exception in the FOIA context
• “[D]eliberations regarding public relations policy are 18 deliberations about policy, even if they involve ‘massaging’ the agency's public image.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).