Government Accountability & Oversight v. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

On October 4, 2022, Government Accountability & Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in federal district court in the District of Columbia seeking to compel the disclosure by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of records related to (1) the costs of sending officials to a conference in Portugal, (2) management of social media platforms, and (3) NOAA’s assistance with a fact-checking article regarding “a talking point about ‘corrupted’ climate change data.” The plaintiff—which the complaint described as a “a nonprofit research, public policy and public interest organization … dedicated to supporting pursuit of governmental transparency particularly in the areas of energy and environmental policy and regulation, how public institutions come to be used in the ways they are, and how policymakers use public resources”—submitted the FOIA requests in August 2022.