Court rejects governor’s move to dismiss public records suit
Legal Events
The court in a unanimous decision rejected Reynolds’ argument that her office wasn’t obligated to respond in a timely matter to record requests and that she could avoid the state’s open records law by simply ignoring the requests. The Supreme Court ordered that the case be returned to the district court where it would be decided on its merits.
“The governor’s office wanted a rule that it and its agencies can ignore public records requests without any consequences,” said Thomas Story, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, which represented three media organizations. “Instead, the Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that nobody is above the law.”
In a statement, Reynolds blamed any delays on a busy staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic and said her office now is responding to records requests.
“While we disagree that this lawsuit should continue, my office has eliminated the backlog of open records requests and is committed to upholding our responsibility to respond to any new requests in a timely manner,” Reynolds said in a statement.
The case stems from a 2021 lawsuit filed by the three media organizations and their reporters who claimed the governor had violated Iowa’s open records law by ignoring requests for government records. The reporters had emailed the governor’s office with eight different open-record requests between April 2020 and April 2021 and renewed each request at least once but didn’t receive any response until filing a lawsuit in December 2021.
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USCIS Will Begin Accepting CW-1 Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019
On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
Since USCIS expects to receive more petitions than the number of CW-1 visas available for FY 2019, USCIS may conduct a lottery to randomly select petitions and associated beneficiaries so that the cap is not exceeded. The lottery would give employers the fairest opportunity to request workers, particularly with the possibility of mail delays from the CNMI.
USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.