Washington – A U.S. appeals court threw out a lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday and ruled that he was free to meet in secret with energy industry lobbyists in 2001 while drawing up the president’s energy policy.
The ruling, which was expected, all but ends a four-year legal battle over Cheney’s task force that drew in the Supreme Court and Justice Antonin Scalia.
Previously, the same appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, upheld a judge’s order that called for Cheney to turn over the names of the oil and gas industry officials who met with his energy policy task force.
But the Supreme Court said this was wrong, and urged the appellate judges to take another look. This time, the court declared that the president and vice president have no duty to tell the public when they seek advice from outsiders.
Therefore, the Sierra Club and the Judicial Watch had no legal right to demand to know who met with Cheney’s energy policy task force in 2001, the court said.
The Sierra Club, a liberal environmental group, and Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, had sued Cheney. They alleged that he violated a 1972 open-government law known as the Federal Advisory Committee Act. It says that when top executive officials seek outside advice, they must do so in public, not behind closed doors.
A federal judge agreed that the lawsuit had some merit, and he ordered the vice president to turn over documents that described who participated.
Cheney refused and appealed to the Supreme Court. In late 2003, that court voted to hear Cheney’s case. Three weeks later, Scalia flew with Cheney aboard Air Force Two to go duck hunting in Louisiana. The Sierra Club lawyers asked Scalia to recuse himself. He refused.
Last June, the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision set aside the appeals court ruling.
In Tuesday’s opinion, the appeals court stopped short of saying it was unconstitutional to force Cheney to disclose the participants. Instead, its opinion reinterpreted the 1972 open- government law to say it did not apply to this case. Outsiders may have met with Cheney’s task force, but they were not truly members of it, the court said.
