# KIRBY VINING v. COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

> District of Columbia Court of Appeals · June 9, 2016 · 140 A.3d 439

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9823991

## Case

- **Full name:** Kirby VINING, Appellant, v. COUNCIL OF the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Appellee
- **Court:** District of Columbia Court of Appeals
- **Decided:** June 9, 2016
- **Citations:** 140 A.3d 439; 2016 D.C. App. LEXIS 197; 2016 WL 3223200
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurring in part by Farrell
- **Judges:** Easterly, McLeese, Farrell
- **Cited by:** 1 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9823991

## Opinion text

FARRELL, Senior Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment:
I agree with the court that D.C. FOIA and the Legislative Privilege Act (LPA), read together, do “not justify the Council’s decision to withhold documents ... in this case.” Ante at 449 (emphasis added). But I am not ready to say, nor need we decide here, that FOIA-requested disclosure of communications to or from a Councilmem-ber in the course of his legislative duties may never be tantamount to, the functional equivalent of, “questioning]” the member *450 as prohibited by the LPA. The fact that information of that kind might also be shielded by another FOIA exemption— say, the deliberative process privilege— would not be reason alone to hold that it falls outside the protection of Exemption 6 via the LPA.
In this case, however, the Council has not met that near-approximation test. Although it turned over numerous documents to appellant, it declined to disclose a large body of them without any individualized showing of how disclosing the information would be equivalent to “question[ing],” and thereby threaten a legislator’s independence through “disruption and intimidation.” Ante at 447. Thus, while I concur in much of the court’s analysis and the result, I would not deny the Council the ability to make that showing in the future.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9823991. Public record. Not legal advice.