Judge rules CDC breaking law for deleting departing staffers’ emails

A U.S. district judge ruled in favor of a legal group aligned with former President Donald Trump that sued the Biden-Harris administration for violating record retention rules.

In a 36-page opinion, Judge Rudolph Contreras found that the “CDC’s policy and practice of disposing of former employees’ emails ninety days after the end of their employment is likely unlawful.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now ordered to stop deleting former lower-level employees until at least three years have passed to be in full compliance with the National Archives protocol known as Capstone. In addition, the National Archives and Records Administration must work with Attorney General Merrick Garland to recover illegally deleted records and force the CDC to comply with the law. 

The lawsuit was first filed in April after America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act request from the CDC regarding a CDC publication titled “LGBT Inclusivity in Schools: A Self-Assessment Tool.” The CDC revealed that two of the three employees who worked on the project had left the agency and their emails were destroyed. The CDC told AFL it routinely deletes most of its employees’ emails 30 days after they leave the agency. 

However, the CDC was not falling in line with Capstone, which mandates all senior officials’ emails be permanently preserved and that lower-level employees have their emails saved for between three and seven years. 

The CDC claimed it did not agree to the whole Capstone protocol, but Contreras ruled the agency did and abandoned part of the plan without permission.

“The available evidence suggests that CDC committed to implementing GRS 6.1 to manage the emails of all of its employees, that NARA approved of CDC’s full implementation of GRS 6.1, and that CDC did not seek — and NARA did not approve — an alternative schedule to govern the disposition of CDC’s lower-level employees’ emails or records,” Contreras wrote.

Contreras said the National Archives should have referred the CDC’s unlawful record-keeping practice to the Department of Justice but failed to do so.

“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,” America First Legal Executive Director Gene Hamilton said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris Administration’s politicization of records management must end.”