Judge Rules CDC Has 'Likely' Been Violating Federal Law for Years After Conservative Group Sounds Alarm
Americans who already had a problem trusting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got a new reason for it on Friday.
A federal judge ruled that the huge federal agency has engaged in “likely unlawful” practices when it comes to retaining the emails of low-level employees, according to Politico.
In fact, after 90 days, it wasn’t retaining them at all.
Judge Rudolph Contreras of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, issued an injunction on Friday ordering the CDC to cease its practice of deleting the emails of former employees — and also ordered the National Archives to work with the Justice Department to attempt to retrieve emails that have been deleted.
The injunction was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by the conservative group America First Legal.
The group published a thread on the social media account X sharing the news:
/1BREAKING
We just secured a preliminary injunction in our lawsuit against the Biden-Harris CDC for illegally deleting employees’ emails.
The National Archives and Attorney General Garland must now work to recover illegally deleted records and make CDC comply with the law: pic.twitter.com/OsYByavu06
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) August 9, 2024
“We just secured a preliminary injunction in our lawsuit against the Biden-Harris CDC for illegally deleting employees’ emails,” the lead post stated.
It continued: “The National Archives and Attorney General Garland must now work to recover illegally deleted records and make CDC comply with the law.”
It’s important to note that the lawsuit and the ruling apply only to lower-level employees.
According to Politico, the CDC followed National Archives protocol that demanded that senior-level employee emails be retained permanently.
For lower-level employees, the protocol demands the emails be retained for seven years.
However, the 36-page ruling makes clear that the vast “majority” of any agency’s employees are made up of what would be considered “lower-level employees.”
And American First Legal pulled no punches when it came to describing the behavior.
“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,” Gene Hamilton, the group’s executive director, said in a statement, according to the Washington Examiner.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s politicization of records management must end.”
To be fair, it wasn’t clear from either news articles or Contreras’ ruling how long the CDC had been engaged in this behavior — whether it started with President Joe Biden’s presidency or was in place during President Donald Trump’s administration, too.
But that’s not likely to change the way this ruling is seen among conservatives.
The CDC is the parent agency of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the government home of former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, a man who’s been a target among conservatives for years — and for good reason.
The record Fouci established as the government’s face of its response to the COVID pandemic did not endear the agency to conservative hearts or minds.
The CDC’s other apparently blatantly political moves, such as replacing the phrase “pregnant women” with the words “pregnant people” have also fostered distrust among conservatives.
And now a federal judge seated in the nation’s capital has found that the huge federal agency has been engaging in “likely unlawful” conduct when it comes to a basic function such as records retention.
Responses to the X post showed America’s First Legal had struck a chord:
Keep holding their feet to the fire. We’re counting on you. 🙏🏻🇺🇸
— Tracy Stover (@DickTrazy) August 9, 2024
You guys are always busy this is an embarrassment to our country the amount of corruption
— absolute hexican (@AbsoluteHexican) August 9, 2024
Narrator: The corrupted government entities won’t comply.
— Journey Into The Whirlwind (@KolymaTales) August 9, 2024
But one might have summed up the spirit of American conservatives toward the CDC better than the rest.
They obviously have something to hide.
— 🅹🅸🅼🅼🅸🅲🆂™ (@jimomics) August 9, 2024
“They obviously have something to hide,” the user wrote.
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