Detroit Free Press Inc. v. United States Department of Justice

More than twenty years ago, this court determined that the Freedom of Information Act, a federal statute dedicated to open government, requires the release of federal indictees’ booking photographs. The Supreme Court did not correct our reading, and neither did Congress. Nevertheless, today’s majority reverses that determination, citing as justification only a vague privacy interest in inherently non-private matters. Today’s decision obscures our government’s most coercive functions — the powers to detain and accuse— and returns them to the shadows. Open government is too dear a cost to pay…