Legal Challenge to Unalienable Rights Commission

On Friday, March 6, a coalition of human rights organizations including the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights and the Global Justice Center filed suit against Secretary Michael Pompeo and the U.S. State Department for violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) in the formation and conduct of the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights (CUR).

Enacted in 1972, the FACA is intended to ensure that advice by the various federal advisory committees is objective and accessible to the public.   The complaint, pending in federal district court in the Southern District of New York, alleges that the CUR does not reflect ideological balance and that its proceedings have not been transparent.  For example, CUR has been slow to publish summary minutes of its meetings and has not made transcripts or agenda materials available at all; a response to a FOIA request filed by American Oversight pointed to the CUR’s website as the source of information about its activities.  The relief sought by the suit is “an order setting aside the Commission’s charter, enjoining it from continuing its work, requiring it to make all Commission records available to the public, and barring Defendants from accepting advice or recommendations from the Commission.”

For more commentary on the CUR, see our blog entries here , by Professor Rachel Lopez here, and by Deanna Hurwitz here.  Links to the Columbia Human Rights Law Review’s series on CUR are available here.