The Centers for Disease Control likely violated federal records laws by systematically deleting the emails of low-ranking employees after leaving the agency, an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled Friday in an order mandating the CDC to stop the practice.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras sided with America First Legal, a conservative legal organization, that brought a lawsuit in D.C. court seeking to have the CDC to immediately stop deleting emails en masse. The ruling was first reported by Politico.
“After considering the parties’ positions and the record evidence in support thereof, the Court concludes that CDC’s policy and practice of disposing of former employees’ emails ninety days after the end of their employment is likely unlawful,” Contreras said.
“Because CDC disposed of former employees’ email records pursuant to a schedule that was not approved by the Archivist, it is likely that Plaintiff is correct that records removed or deleted under the CDC’s unapproved policy were removed or deleted unlawfully.”
The CDC adhered to a records policy that was not approved by the National Archives, despite signaling that it adopted the Archives’s Capstone approach to handling records, Contreras found. Under the Capstone policy, emails between senior officials are supposed to be preserved permanently, and emails between junior employees are required to be retained for three to seven years depending on the position. The CDC argued that it only applied the National Archives’s records policy to senior officials covered by Capstone and not lower-level employees.
America First Legal challenged the CDC’s records-retention practices after the CDC responded to a records request by informing the organization that it routinely deletes employee emails shortly after they leave the agency. In April, America First Legal sued the Department of Health and Human Services to put an end to the CDC’s email deletions, following the National Archives’s decision to defer to the CDC following an investigation into the matter.
Contreras’s ruling instructs the National Archives to refer the record-keeping matter to Attorney General Merrick Garland to ensure compliance with the ruling and the recovery of deleted emails.
“The Biden-Harris Administration was actively destroying the records of federal employees at the CDC in blatant violation of the law–and we are pleased that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered a stop to their illegal conduct,” said America First Legal executive director Gene Hamilton.
“The Department of Justice has rightfully been ordered to assist with retrieving these records and putting an end to these illegal practices. The Biden-Harris Administration’s politicization of records management must end, and we look forward to holding them accountable for their illegal actions in all such circumstances.”