Fla. Court Slams Feds for Ordering State Agency to Withhold Public Records
"In ordering the FDOT to provide the records to the media the judge, Kevin Carroll, writes that turning them over to the NTSB did not change their status as public records. “Simply put, under Florida law, it is clear that furnishing a document (which was a public record when it was made or created record) to an investigating agency would not alter its status as a pubic record and it would remain available for public inspection,” the judge writes. In the ruling Carroll also responds to a U.S. government filing that attempts to sway the court to withhold the bridge records by claiming that making them public could impair the NTSB’s investigation. The judge doesn’t buy it, writing that “there may well be a legitimate concern regarding the disclosure of information obtained from private sources. This Court however, has difficulty envisioning how that argument applies to materials maintained by the State of Florida which were already public at the time they were provided to the NTSB.”
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2018/08/fla-court-slams-feds-for-ordering-state-agency-to-withhold-public-records/