FCC Denies TracFone Attorney's FOIA Bid To View Lifeline NAL Records
The FCC rejected a TracFone counsel's appeal to view Lifeline enforcement records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The agency denied an application for review filed by Mitchell Brecher of Greenberg Traurig seeking to reverse a 2014 Wireline Bureau…
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decision. The bureau had denied his FOIA request that sought information relating to FCC notices of apparent liability (NALs) against his firm's client TracFone and 11 other companies for apparently violating Lifeline USF rules by obtaining subsidy support for more than one subscriber from the same household. Brecher narrowed and clarified his request to three categories of records, but the bureau said the documents were exempt from FOIA disclosure. The full commission agreed in an order Tuesday, with Commissioner Mike O'Rielly partially dissenting. He said he agreed the records were exempt from FOIA release but dissented from the application of Exemption 5 to communications between the FCC and the Universal Service Administrative Co. He said USAC was neither part of the FCC nor a separate federal agency, but an independent, private nonprofit corporation. "FCC-USAC communications are clearly neither intra-agency nor inter-agency communications protected by the deliberative process privilege, and should not be treated as such," he said in a statement attached to the order. Brecher didn't comment.