January 30, 2017 – MRFF Tenacity Leads to Huge Victory for Government Transparency at U.S. Air Force Academy

MRFF’s work on behalf of its clients at USAFA in response to USAFA’s well documented ongoing espousal and promotion of fundamentalist sectarian religious Christian Evangelicalism has resulted in a vitriolic campaign against Mikey Weinstein, his family, and many MRFF supporters and clients.  In response, MRFF lawfully sought thousands of documents in the form of emails, memoranda, and directives pertaining in any way to MRFF or anyone associated with MRFF under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2011.

USAFA ignored the request for nearly one year. After producing only a fraction of the documents generated by the request in 2012, the USAFA spent the next three years delaying and refusing to produce records in accordance with the federal transparency law. After four years of obfuscation, MRFF filed suit on November 5, 2015 to compel the agency to provide the responsive records. The suit alleged specific violations of the FOIA, which requires government entities to make most types of records available to the public upon request, as well as alleging that USAFA engaged in a pattern and practice of deliberately violating the law with regard to MRFF. After over one year of litigation, the USAFA has produced nearly 8,000 additional records to MRFF and has agreed to perform supplemental records searches for those years during which the USAFA unlawfully delayed in responding to MRFF’s request. USAFA has also agreed to pay MRFF’s lawyers, Vincent Ward and Amber Fayerberg, $25,000 in legal fees.

MRFF anticipates that USAFA’s supplemental records searches will turn up thousands of additional and important documents. This result is a victory for MRFF, a victory for the Constitution and a victory for government transparency. MRFF will continue to insist that military agencies open their files to the public and will continue to shed light on USAFA’s violations of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion and freedom from the establishment of a government religion.