A COURT OF APPEALS in the United States state of Virginia has rejected a lawsuit by former intelligence employees who claimed that the system of pre-publication review violated their freedom of speech.
The case centered on the requirement for
current and former employees of American intelligence agencies to submit
for review any material they intend to publish in the unclassified
domain, in case it contains government secrets.
The lawsuit originated in 2019, when it
was brought before a court by five former employees of the Central
Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence, and the Department of Defense. All
five plaintiffs intended to publish books on topics including the
history of the CIA, government surveillance, as well as the prevalence
of sexual violence and racism in the US armed forces.
The plaintiffs claimed that the
pre-publication review system is unclear and confusing, that its scope
is too broad, and that the process takes too long. They also claimed
that many of the edits made on their manuscripts aimed to protect
government agencies from embarrassment and criticism, rather than
protect national security. Furthermore, they claimed that many of the
alleged secrets that were edited out of manuscripts referred to
information that was already available in the open domain. All five
plaintiffs were represented by lawyers from the Knight First Amendment
Institute at Columbia University and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The government was represented by the US Department of Justice.
Last year, a US District Court in the US
state of Maryland dismissed the claim on the grounds that the government
was justified in wanting to protect its secrets, and that the
pre-publication system was intricate but unambiguous. On Wednesday, the
4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, upheld
the District Court’s ruling. In a unanimous vote, the court’s three
judges concluded that, by voluntarily agreeing to submit to the
pre-publication review system, the plaintiffs had waived their right to
challenge the system’s legality under the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution.
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