Thread by @weareoversight

ICYMI: We’re challenging excessive redactions of #USPS chief DeJoy’s calendar.

USPS’s shifting arguments for hiding DeJoy’s calendars from #FOIA requests threaten to create blanket exemptions for practically any USPS records.
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

On Friday, we submitted a brief challenging an argument from USPS that was used to justify the near-complete redaction of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s calendars. We’ve been fighting for these records for months, but USPS continues to obscure the documents.

In July 2020, we FOIA’d DeJoy’s calendars to investigate the undermining of USPS.

But in August, USPS rejected our FOIA, saying the “calendar maintained on a USPS computer” was for DeJoy's personal use and the entries ”are not agency records subject to the FOIA.”

In September, we sued for the records. The next month, USPS agreed to release DeJoy’s calendars.

Then, in December, USPS finally sent us calendars but almost every meaningful bit of information in the over 1,000 entries was redacted.

These calendars cover a contentious period of DeJoy’s tenure, marked by controversial decisions that reduced capacity and increased delays during the run-up to the election. The changes raised serious questions about political interference at USPS during these months.

USPS didn't specify which specific exemptions they are claiming applied to the individual redactions, as is generally required by the law.

USPS does have a specific FOIA exemption addressing commercial concerns because it competes with private-sector carriers. But applying that narrow exemption in the very broad way USPS has attempted here threatens to vastly expand what the agency could hold back.

“USPS’s radical arguments, if accepted by this Court, would convert specific, narrow FOIA exemptions into a blanket exemption for virtually any USPS record,” explains American Oversight’s brief, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Learn more about our investigation into political interference at USPS here:
americanoversight.org/investigation/…