Judge Disappoints Wingnuts: Fed Employees Have Privacy Rights, Even the Gay Ones

Back in August of 2012, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder addressed a gathering of LGBT employees of the Justice Department at the “Lavender Law Conference & Career Fair”, sponsored by the LGBT Bar Association. Naturally, this set off alarm bells for the right wing group Judicial Watch, which immediately espied a diabolical conspiracy!

“The Department of Justice is increasingly home to a bevy of leftist activists pursuing narrow ideological agendas at the expense of the public interest,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And Justice officials want to keep this all a secret – as shown by the fact that we had to file a FOIA lawsuit to get basic information about the Attorney General’s collusion with homosexual activists/government employees.”

So just what information was Judicial Watch demanding? Raw Story has the deets:

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the federal government on August 27 of that year, demanding full access to a laundry list of documents including Holder’s cell-phone number, his email address, e-mails “discussing the drafting of the Attorney General’s speech” at the conference, “the cell phone numbers of third parties associated with an LGBT organization,” “the cell phone and home numbers and personal e-mail addresses of various employees of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security,” emails between “Department employees, including personal commentary and discussions among colleagues inferring the sexual orientation of some Department employees who would be involved at the conference.” (Emphasis added)

That’s right. This group seems to believe that it would be perfectly reasonable for the Federal government to just hand over the personal phone numbers and email addresses of Federal employees just so Judicial Watch could try to “prove” some imaginary collusion between the Gay Mafia and Eric Holder. They also want to be able to comb through internal emails, not for signs of corruption, policy issues or any other valid use of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, but so that they might “infer” which employees are gay. Sheesh.

Unsurprisingly, the group’s FOIA request was denied, prompting Judicial Watch to sue the Department of Justice. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle handed down a decision crushing Judicial Watch’s gay-witch-hunt dreams, writing that turning over these documents to Judicial Watch “creates a palpable threat to privacy.” Judge Huvelle further wrote that, “Balancing this privacy interest against, at most, the relatively inconsequential (if not non-existent) interests identified by the plaintiff,” summary judgement for the DOJ was called for. “Even a modest privacy interest outweighs nothing every time.”

Ha ha ha ha ha.

By: Sandi Behrns

Sandi Behrns is a noted policy nerd, new media & web developer, and consultant to progressive organizations and campaigns. She is a senior contributor to Liberaland, and the Executive Editor of Progressive Congress News.