Supreme Court agrees to hear newspaper lawsuit over releasing food stamp income for grocers - Entrepreneur Generations

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to rule whether the U.S. Department of Agriculture must reveal how much money grocers, gas stations and other retailers get from federal food stamps.

The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, first filed suit in 2011 against the Food Marketing Institute, a retail trade group that argued such figures are confidential records that would harm businesses' ability to compete with other retailers if released. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the figures couldn't be withheld from the public. But FMI persuaded a majority of Supreme Court justices to review that ruling, arguing that the Freedom of Information Act contains exemptions for some types of information, Jonathan Ellis reports for the Argus Leader.

"The exemption at issue in the FMI/Argus Leader case – exemption 4 – concerns sensitive trade secrets or confidential business records that, if released, would cause substantial competitive harm," Ellis reports. "FMI argues that businesses should decide what constitutes confidential information, and that lower courts have issued conflicting rulings about exemption 4."

However, the Argus Leader has maintained throughout the lawsuit that it wants records of taxpayer payments and not confidential business records, Ellis reports.

from The Rural Blog http://bit.ly/2UcMbPi Supreme Court agrees to hear newspaper lawsuit over releasing food stamp income for grocers - Entrepreneur Generations

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