Judge hears Indians' document request
By Judy Harrison
Friday, May 25, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
BANGOR — Attorneys for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and for a group that opposes construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal on Indian land were back before a federal judge Thursday arguing over public access to records.
U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock at a hearing in September harshly criticized the way the BIA handled requests for documents from We Protect Our Homeland, a group of Pleasant Point reservation residents who oppose the proposed LNG terminal at Split Rock.
The group of Passamaquoddys sued the government agency in December 2005 after its requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act yielded far less than they’d anticipated.
Woodcock, who was less confrontational Thursday than he was last year, heard summary judgment arguments from both sides in U.S. District Court in Bangor during a 90-minute hearing. He is not expected to issue his written decision until later this summer.
After the judge’s strong rebuke last year, the BIA released more documents, but Justin Kolber, a Vermont attorney representing the Indians, claimed there still might be documents they are entitled to see.
The group is asking that Woodcock order the agency not to wrongfully withhold documents in the future. Plaintiffs also want the BIA to pay its legal fees, though Kolber could not estimate Thursday what the cost might end up totaling.
Kolber works for the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at the Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vt.
Although students helped prepare briefs and sat in on Thursday’s hearing, only Kolber argued the case before Woodcock. Robin A. Friedman, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., argued for the BIA and the Department of Interior.
Friedman admitted that the BIA mistakenly withheld documents and that it should not have taken four separate searches of records to find the information We Protect Our Homeland was entitled to.
He claimed that the group now has all the documents covered under the FOIA and that the documents still being withheld are exempt under the law.
Woodcock, who has seen all the documents in question, will decide which, if any, still need to be released to the group. The judge also must decide whether the delays in releasing information violated the reasonable clause under FOIA and what the remedy should be.
We Protect Our Homeland filed two lawsuits in 2005 and a third in 2006 because members believe their viewpoints were not represented in May 2005 when the Pleasant Point Tribal Council signed a partnership agreement with Quoddy Bay LLC of Tulsa, Okla.
The agreement included a lease to tribal land at Split Rock where Quoddy Bay plans to build a liquefied natural gas terminal.
In November, Woodcock dismissed two of the lawsuits, ruling that the organization did not have standing to bring them and that they had been filed too soon. An appeal in one of those cases is scheduled to be heard next month in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
In September, the judge dismissed a portion of the lawsuit seeking the documents but allowed another portion to continue.
"We’re very pleased to be able to still be engaged in the process," Vera J. Francis of Pleasant Point, a plaintiff in the case, said after Thursday’s hearing. "The BIA and the Department of the Interior has done all it could to deny us access to the process at every step. We’ve persevered to be able to pursue the truth about the ground lease. We feel a deep responsibility to continue to pursue this."
Link to Report
Contents
May 2007 Reports
Last updated on May 25, 2007