An administrative law judge has shot down the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction's request to make public internal federal fisheries law enforcement documents that purportedly show government "misconduct" in building federal agents' case against the region's leading fish broker.
But following advice offered by Judge Walter J. Brudzinski in an earlier ruling, the auction has taken an alternative route to the disputed documents. Paul Muniz, the auction's attorney, has filed a Freedom of Information request for copies of the same documents the judge has refused to allow released to the public.
Muniz' motion, which Brudzinski rejected Aug. 31, argued that refusing to allow the documents to be made public amounted to a "classic example of prior restraint" or a "gag order."
To support his motion, Muniz cited the so-called Pentagon Papers case, in which the Nixon administration in 1971 attempted to block The New York Times and Washington Post from publishing leaked classified documents illuminating Vietnam War strategies. The Supreme Court barred the government from halting publication.
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