The Department of Justice filed a cert petition today asking the Supreme Court to review the 2-1 decision of the Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit striking down a portion of the Affordable Care Act.   The following statement was released today regarding this action.

“The Department has consistently and successfully defended this law in several court of appeals, and only the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled it unconstitutional. We believe the question is appropriate for review by the Supreme Court.

 “Throughout history, there have been similar challenges to other landmark legislation such as the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and all of those challenges failed.  We believe the challenges to Affordable Care Act — like the one in the 11th Circuit — will also ultimately fail and that the Supreme Court will uphold the law.”

 For more information about the Justice Department’s continued defense of the Affordable Care Act, visit justice.gov/healthcare.

President Obama made openness a priority of his Administration, committing to an “unprecedented level of openness in Government” on his first full day in office. 

In the years since that declaration more information has been released under Freedom of Information Act, and made available on government websites, than ever before. The federal government continues to use technology in innovative ways that harness government information to improve the lives of ordinary citizens.

As President Obama today signs the Open Government Partnership declaration, the Justice Department is proud to highlight some of the ways that it has advanced America’s open government agenda and created a more efficient and effective government through greater transparency, participation, and collaboration.

As the “flagship initiative,” of its Open Government Plan, the Justice Department pledged a new “FOIA Dashboard.” The site, FOIA.gov, launched earlier this year. It is a comprehensive resource for government-wide FOIA compliance data and educational information.

FOIA.gov presents data on agency FOIA processing, including the numbers of FOIA requests made and processed by each agency, the disposition of those requests, the time taken to respond, and any backlogs of pending requests.  That data can be compared and contrasted between agencies and over time.  Users can select the criteria they want to examine and then run a report on the site. 

As an educational resource, FOIA.gov contains material about how the FOIA works and what to expect during the process, and also provides contact information for all government agencies with links to their FOIA websites. 

The department has also begun posting newly digitized reference materials – including legislative histories and archived speeches of former Attorneys General. These materials were previously available only to department employees. 

The legislative histories track the development and passage of laws that were deemed of interest to the department or in which the department played a vital role.  

In addition, speeches from past  Attorneys General are being digitized and posted online. Dating from 1933 to 2009, many of these documents have never before been widely available. These documents will prove to be a treasure trove to librarians, researchers and anyone else interested in the department’s history and documents.

An open and good government is much more than releasing information.  It is about harnessing the skills and talents of the American people, establishing greater collaboration among Federal agencies, and ensuring that the taxpayer’s money is wisely spent.  To that end, today, the department is recommitting itself to the principles that the President announced on his first day in office and exemplified in our work since then. 

In the upcoming months the Department of Justice plans to convene an Interagency Technology Working Group to focus on expanding the use of technology in the core elements of FOIA administration. 

Agencies across the government have already embraced technology to assist in receipt and tracking of requests and generation of Annual FOIA Reports.   The next step is to improve and streamline administration of the FOIA. Improving this process will allow agencies to respond to requests more quickly and will further reduce backlogs. 

In the coming months, the Office of Information Policy, will seek input from interested stakeholders and lead an effort to transform the administration of the FOIA.

For more information on the Justice Department’s Open Government efforts, visit justice.gov/open.

Today, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the Commonwealth of Virginia v. Kathleen Sebelius and Liberty University v. Geithner cases challenging the Affordable Care Act.  The Department of Justice issued the following statement: 

 “We welcome the dismissal of these two challenges to the Affordable Care Act.  We also continue to appreciate the rulings of other courts on the merits upholding the constitutionality of the Act. Throughout history, there have been similar challenges to other landmark legislation such as the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and all of those challenges failed as well.  We will continue to vigorously defend the health care reform statute in any litigation challenging it, and we believe we will prevail.”

For more information about the department’s ongoing defense of the Affordable Care Act, visit justice.gov/healthcare.

Have you ever wondered about the legislative process that led to the creation of the Department of Justice in 1870? Or how Congress changed the law concerning telemarketers in 1998?

A number of digitized legislative histories compiled by the Department of Justice library staff throughout the years on laws of interest to department have now been made available to the public on our website, justice.gov.   These legislative histories are an important roadmap into the development and passage of a law of the United States.

A “legislative history” of a law consists of documents created as a result of the legislative process during a law’s consideration, passage by Congress, and signature by the President. 

 A compiled legislative history assists in organizing the various documents that resulted in the passage of a law. Attorneys and researchers are then able to efficiently search and review the compiled legislative documents to find legal clarifications specific statutory language within the law. 

Most legislative histories may include some, or all, of the following: the U.S. Public Law; House and Senate Documents; House, Senate, and Conference Reports; House and Senate Committee Hearings; Congressional Debates (Congressional Record); related Bills; and Presidential Statements.

Our digitized legislative histories are unique and may be more comprehensive than other legislative histories on the same laws available through other libraries or research databases.

The documents within the legislative histories added to justice.gov were originally researched, comprehensively collected from Congressional publications, and bound into paper volumes by our librarians.  Until now, these multi-volume histories were made available only to department employees through the Justice Department’s main library collection.

They have been digitized and are now available to the public. We invite you to view them online.

Today the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s ruling in the Thomas More Law Center v. Obama case dismissing the challenge to the Affordable Care Act – upholding the law as constitutional.  Tracy Schmaler, Deputy Director of the Office of Public Affairs released the following statement:

“We welcome the Sixth Circuit’s ruling today dismissing this challenge to the Affordable Care Act and its finding that Congress acted within its authority in passing this landmark health care reform law.  We will continue to vigorously defend the health care reform statute in any litigation challenging it.  Throughout history, there have been similar challenges to other landmark legislation such as the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and all of those challenges failed.  We believe these challenges to health reform will also fail.”

 For more information on defending the Affordable Care Act, visit justice.gov/healthcare.

On January 18, 2011, President Obama ordered federal agencies (via Executive Order 13563) to review existing significant regulations to determine whether they should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed.

As time passes and technologies, legal standards, and circumstances change, regulations may become outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome.

We want to make our regulatory program more effective and less burdensome while still achieving its regulatory objectives.

The Department sought suggestions from regulated entities and the general public. We incorporated those suggestions throughout the plan. The Department also incorporated best practices from the extensive agency efforts already underway to review existing regulations, respond to petitions for rulemaking, modernize technologies, and engage the public.

Read the Preliminary Plan for Retrospective Review of Existing Regulations (PDF)

Going forward, the Department proposes to establish a Department‐wide working group that will institutionalize a culture of retrospective review. The working group plans to review one to three rules each year, and the components have already identified several candidate rules that the group will evaluate through the retrospective review process described in this plan. Once the working group reviews these initial candidates, the Department plans to report to the public on the outcome of its assessment. Throughout this process, the Department seeks to build upon its commitment to open government and to promote evidence‐based, decision‐making with respect to regulations

Members of the public are encouraged to comment on this Preliminary Plan and suggest additional candidate rules on or before June 30, 2011.   To comment on the Justice Department’s Preliminary Plan, visit www.regulations.gov and insert DOJ-LA-2011-0016 in the “Enter Keyword or ID” box.  Once you are taken to the docket for this plan, click on the “Submit a Comment” bubble to open the comment form. We look forward to hearing from you.