CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION HIT WITH FOIA SUIT: Writing at Liberty Unyielding, Hans Bader reports the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (CCR) resorted to a ridiculous justification for refusing to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Bader Family Foundation.

The FOIA sought email records for a six-month period for two CCR members, Chairman Catherine Lhamon and Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, the director of its Office of Civil Rights Evaluation. The CCR denied the request, claiming it “fails to describe the information sought.” Typical bureaucratic hair-splitting to avoid accountability and transparency.

Bader explains that “the commission claimed that ‘the request failed to ‘contain a sufficiently specific description of the record requested with respect to names, dates, and subject matter … as required by’ its FOIA regulation.’ But that regulation only requires a FOIA request to ‘contain a sufficiently specific description of the record requested with respect to names, dates, and subject matter to permit such record to be identified and located.'” [Italics added]

The emails could be extremely useful in determining whether Lhamon should be confirmed by the Senate after being nominated by President Joe Biden to be the next Director of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

That is one of those jobs in the federal bureaucracy that is obscure but tremendously powerful because if confirmed Lhamon would have tremendous power over the daily activities in America’s public school system classrooms. Bader quotes Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) saying “Ms. Lhamon has a history of using inflammatory rhetoric, violating students’ constitutionally based right to due process, and abusing regulatory power.”