Amy Coney Barrett Issues First SCOTUS Opinion

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Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has officially issued her first opinion since joining the highest court in the land.

Fox News reports:

The case, United States Fish and Wildlife Service et al. v. Sierra Club, dealt with whether unapproved drafts of biological opinions by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service can be obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In a 7-2 decision, Barrett was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in ruling that the documents were protected by what is known as the deliberative process privilege, even though the conclusions in the drafts ultimately reflected the agencies’ final decisions.

“The deliberative process privilege protects the draft biological opinions from disclosure because they are both predecisional and deliberative,” Barrett wrote, reversing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in the case.

The case was also the first one in which Barrett had participated in oral arguments. Her first question presented a hypothetical where an agency official might mark a document as a draft in order to protect it from disclosure. She asked “what other factors would a court consider” in determining whether or not a document should be protected.

President Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett to the bench before leaving office. Justice Barrett filled the seat left by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.



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