Today the Supreme Court issued a decision on the FOIA as applied to federal agency deliberative memoranda. While this does not affect local government directly, many local governments must comply with public information laws that use FOIA as an interpretive basis. The following is a write-from NAAG: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club, Inc., 19-547. Exemption 5 of the Freedom of Information Act "incorporates the privileges available to Government agencies in civil litigation, such as the deliberative process privilege, attorney-client privilege, and attorney work-product privilege." By a 7-2 vote, the Court held that the deliberative process privilege "protects from disclosure . . . in-house drafts that proved to be the agencies' last word about a proposal's potential threat to endangered species." The Court reasoned that "[t]he deliberative process privilege protects the draft biological opinions at issue here because they reflect a preliminary view-not a final decision-about the likely effect of the EPA's proposed rule on endangered species." (This was Justice Barrett's first opinion as a Justice.) Charles W. Thompson, Jr. General Counsel & Executive Director D: 202-742-1016 P: (202) 466-5424 x7110 M: (240)-876-6790 [facebook icon]<https://www.facebook.com/InternationalMunicipalLawyersAssociation/>[twitter icon]<https://twitter.com/imlalegal>[linkedin icon]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-municipal-lawyers-association-inc./> [logo]<https://imla.org/> 51 Monroe St. Suite 404 Rockville, MD, 20850 www.imla.org<http://www.imla.org/> Plan Ahead! IMLA's fully virtual 2021 Mid-Year Seminar<https://imla.org/seminars/>, April 19-23, 2021 IMLA's 86th Annual Conference<https://imla.org/annual-conference/>, Sept. 29-Oct. 3, 2021 in Minneapolis, MN