A bow to the presidency With 'deference' granted to the executive branch, the public's right to know is restricted. By REGISTER EDITORIAL BOARD <mailto:[log in to unmask]> June 25, 2004 Although the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to duck a decision in the legal battle between environmental groups and Vice President Dick Cheney, the court's ruling Thursday was a clear victory for the Bush administration. At the very least, the court let the administration off the hook on this hot potato issue for the remainder of this term. This case has generated attention in part because it involves a battle for access to records of the vice president's energy task force and in part because of questions about Cheney's duck-hunting trip with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia while Cheney's appeal was before the court. Apart from those controversies, the legal battle over whether the Cheney energy-policy task force was legally able to block public access to its meetings and documents involves a classic constitutional struggle between the courts and the executive branch. Two groups, Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, sued to force the White House to release Cheney's task-force documents in an effort to determine how much the process was influenced by energy producers. The Bush administration petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to quash the lawsuit as an unconstitutional or illegal intrusion on the executive branch. That court denied the petition, allowing the lawsuit to go forward. The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday sent the case back to the D.C. appeals court with instructions that can be read only one way: You read the law incorrectly in denying the administration's petition. As a result, it's likely the appeals court will ultimately bring the case to a close. Either way, Thursday's Supreme Court ruling means the case could be fought for a year or more before it comes to a conclusion. In which case, it will be a long time, if ever, before the public will find out just how much influence energy producers had on the administration's energy policy. Besides winning a reprieve, the administration won some ground back on the question of executive privilege. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, made it clear that the federal courts must exercise great deference to the executive branch in a civil case such as this, unlike a criminal case such as President Nixon faced during Watergate. Thus, the groups fighting to open up the administration's deliberative process to public scrutiny appear to have not only lost this case, but put in motion a Supreme Court decision that will make it harder to do that in future presidential administrations as well. Tarah Heinzen Sierra Club Conservation Organizer 3839 Merle Hay Road, Suite 280 Des Moines, IA 50310 (515) 251-3995 [log in to unmask] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Make your voice heard! Find out how to get Take Action Alerts and other important Sierra Club messages by email at: http://www.sierraclub.org/email