The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been operating “in the shadows,” wielding unconstitutional authority across multiple agencies while providing the public with “no meaningful transparency” and failing to keep proper records, according to a new lawsuit from a nonprofit government watchdog group.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) accused DOGE of unlawfully refusing to comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records associated with the government group’s actions and ignored repeated demands for DOGE to preserve its records under the Federal Records Act.

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CREW has requested records and documents related to communications between Office of Management and Budget (OMB) staffers and individuals who were affiliated with DOGE prior to Trump’s inauguration, changes to the operations of the U.S. Digital Service, organizational charts and financial disclosures, and DOGE’s communications with federal agencies, which DOGE and the other plaintiffs have so far failed to turn over.

The filing requests that a federal judge order OMB and DOGE — as well as their leaders — to promptly disclose the requested records, to preserve all records until the court decides the case, and to initiate enforcement action to recover any lost records.

The suit asserts that while President Donald Trump vowed DOGE would operate with “maximum transparency,” in actuality, “it has done the opposite.”

“The entity has worked in the shadows — a cadre of largely unidentified actors, whose status as government employees is unclear, controlling major government functions with no oversight. [DOGE] has provided no meaningful transparency into its operations or assurances that it is maintaining proper records of its unprecedented and legally dubious work,” the suit states.

Despite the federal government dismissing the criminal cases against Donald Trump after his 2024 election victory, the world may soon find out more about the former and current president’s alleged mishandling of confidential documents — including whether he “flushed some presidential records down the toilet” during his first stint in office.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday ordered the FBI to release records the bureau had previously withheld in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by investigative journalist Jason Leopold.

Ironically, it was Trump’s victory over Joe Biden in conjunction with the U.S. Supreme Court’s sweeping ruling granting a sitting president immunity from prosecution for official acts — litigation instigated by Trump — that formed the basis for the court’s holding in the FOIA case.

In a 26-page order, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell reasoned that because Trump (and the co-defendants he pardoned after taking office) were no longer in danger of being prosecuted for the alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, the federal government could no longer prevent the disclosure of the documents requested by Leopold.

“Despite filling nearly 400 pages, including exhibits and declarations, briefing in this case fell behind developments in the real world that carry fatal consequences for the agency’s proffered rationale for withholding records responsive to a request under the Freedom of Information Act,” Howell wrote. “Absent correct application of an exemption, disclosure is required to allow the American people to learn about actions of government officials that the officials themselves may not otherwise want to be made public. As the D.C. Circuit has long made clear: ‘One basic general assumption of the FOIA is that, in many important public matters, it is for the public to know and then to judge.””

Noella Sudbury knew she was onto something big when she helped organize Utah’s first free “Expungement Day” in 2018. The former public defender and Goldman Sachs compliance attorney had gone to work in 2016 for Ben McAdams, then-mayor of Salt Lake County. McAdams had introduced initiatives to address criminal justice reform, and Sudbury had become immersed in improving the expungement process.

One in three adult Americans has a criminal record, which she says can create significant barriers to housing, employment or even volunteering in their children’s classrooms.

Expungement was also expensive and complicated and, at that time, typically took about 18 months to complete, Sudbury says.

After hundreds of people came to the Expungement Day event, Sudbury knew she needed to do more.”It was the first time I think as a lawyer that I realized how big of a justice gap we had and how access to this simple legal proceeding could absolutely transform someone’s life,” says Sudbury, 39, who earned a bachelor’s degree in social justice from the University of Utah in 2006 and a JD from the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law in 2009.

Sudbury founded Clean Slate Utah, a nonprofit that raises awareness of automatic record clearance, in 2021. She also had begun working on clean slate laws in other states; there are now 12.

Sudbury started Rasa Legal in 2022 to make the process of clearing a criminal record simpler and more affordable. She researched how to use technology to assist with expungement and learned about Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate law. By the following year, she had helped introduce and pass a similar clean slate law in Utah. It requires the government to automatically clear certain misdemeanor records.

“Noella sees individuals as they are and not by their record,” says Destiny Garcia, the executive director of Clean Slate Utah, who worked with Sudbury to clear her own criminal record. “She will sit down with someone, and she will listen to their story. She will take the time to get to know them and understand how to help them.”

In the course of her work, Sudbury realized many people still needed help determining their eligibility for expungement and finding a lawyer to complete the process. That’s where Rasa comes in. Using its $15 eligibility screening tool, in less than three minutes, people can see what’s on their record and whether it can be cleared. If they have eligible cases, they can hire Rasa to clear those records using custom software that streamlines the process. While law firms can charge thousands of dollars for expungement, Rasa starts at $250 per case.

“What sets Noella apart is she’s out there changing the structural framework of the laws that then enable her to serve consumers in a way she thinks is necessary,” says Natalie Anne Knowlton, the founder of Access to Justice Ventures and a 2023 ABA Journal Legal Rebel.

According to Sudbury, Rasa, which has 16 employees and now offers its services in Utah and Arizona, has helped nearly 17,000 people and fully cleared more than 3,000 records. It is currently working to expand into other states and provide workforce development services to clients.

In her free time, Sudbury loves spending time with her two kids, traveling and being in nature.

Legal Rebels Class of 2025

Rodrigo Camarena

Roy Ferguson

Joan Howarth and Deborah Jones Merritt

Oregon State Board of Bar Examiners

Swapna Reddy

Jacqueline Schafer

Noella Sudbury

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2. Daily News
3. Attorney discipline records short of disbarment…

Ethics

Attorney discipline records short of disbarment would be expunged after 8 years under state bar plan

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 21, 2024, 9:00 am CST

The California Supreme Court is being asked to automatically expunge records of attorney discipline other than disbarment after eight years, provided that there is no further discipline during that period.

The State Bar of California’s board of trustees approved the proposal Nov. 14 and sent it to the state supreme court, according to a Nov. 15 press release. The board also directed staff to remove administrative suspensions from online attorney profiles.

The changes stemmed from recommendations by the state bar’s Ad Hoc Commission on the Discipline System. The commission viewed expungement as a way to address racial disparities in discipline and align the system with the practices of other regulatory agencies, the press release stated.

A November 2019 study found racial disparities in probationary discipline, disbarment and discipline-related resignation, with the greatest disparities between Black and white male lawyers.

Reuters and Law360 had coverage of the expungement proposal.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Bureau of Land Management reminds claimants who wish to retain mining claims on public lands through the 2025 assessment year to pay a Maintenance Fee or file a Maintenance Fee Waiver Certification (Small Miner’s Waiver) on or before Tues., Sept. 3, to prevent the mining claim from being declared forfeit and void.

Courtesy Mining Claims Packets are available online or upon request through the California State Office, Information Access Center (Public Room). The BLM will not be mailing packets, unless requested.

The Maintenance Fee for a Lode Claim, Tunnel Site, or Mill Site is $200 per claim or site. For Placer Claims only, the fees are $200 for every 20 acres or portion thereof. Claimants who filed a Small Miner’s Waiver in 2023 for the 2024 assessment year will be required to file an Affidavit of Annual Assessment Work form, including the required $15 assessment fee per claim on or before Monday, Dec. 30.

The California State Office Public Room is open to in-person visits; however, the BLM encourages submission of mining claims by mail or online.

• Mail: Checks must be pre-printed showing the address, with recommended Certified Mail being the preferred method of shipment, to Bureau of Land Management-CASO, ATTN: Accounts/Mining, 2800 Cottage Way, W-1623, Sacramento, CA 95825. Payments or filings by mail must be postmarked on or before Tues, Sept. 3.
   
• Phone: For Maintenance Fees Only: Call 916-978-4400 to pay with a credit card by telephone.
   
• Online: Visit the BLM’s Mineral & Land Records System (MLRS) payment portal to make payment with a credit card. Note: The Small Miner’s Waiver cannot be filed on MLRS due to original signatures needed; please submit the Small Miner’s Waiver in-person or through the mail.
   
• In-person: claimants who wish to make filings and payments via mail or in-person must make their filing to the proper BLM State Office for the state where the mining claims or sites are located. Check the website for times and telephone numbers for BLM Public Room hours.

For information on the filing deadlines, Maintenance Fees, Maintenance Fee Waiver Certifications, or Federal Land Policy and Management Act filings (Affidavit of Annual Assessment Work or Notice of Intent to Hold) please call the Information Access Center (CA Public Room) at 916-978-4400 or visit the BLM California Public Room website.

To review mining claim fees, please visit the website or the Federal Register. Please note the Federal Register notice states the fees are due on or before Sept. 1, 2024; however, that date is moved out to Sept. 3 due to the first being on a Sunday and Tuesday, Sept. 2, is a federal holiday.

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3. Utah Supreme Court rules for adult adoptee…

Family Law

Utah Supreme Court rules for adult adoptee who wanted to unseal records for medical and genetic information

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 28, 2024, 8:42 am CST

A district court misinterpreted the law when it ruled that an adult adoptee can’t obtain her 1978 adoption records to provide her doctors with information about health predispositions, the Utah Supreme Court has ruled.

At issue is whether adoptee Marianne Tyson had shown “good cause” to obtain the records as required by Utah law, which seals adoption records for 100 years.

A district court had ruled that Tyson didn’t satisfy the “good cause” standard because the health and genetic information that she sought was not related to a specific medical condition.

The district court reasoned that giving Tyson access to the records would undermine the law’s privacy protections for birth parents.

The Utah Supreme Court ruled that the district court erred by trying “to breathe a more specific meaning into the phrase ‘good cause.’ Although it is understandable that the court would want more guidance than the statute provides, it interpreted the statute in a fashion that rewrote the law.”

“Stated differently,” the Utah Supreme Court said in its Feb. 22 decision, “if the legislature had wanted to impose a requirement that a petitioner point to something more than wanting to know her medical history, it could have put that in the statute. It did not, and it was error for the court to do so.”

The district court had determined that Tyson’s reasons for obtaining the records did not outweigh her birth mother’s interest in privacy.

“But instead of balancing both interests” as required by a Utah procedural rule, the district court “focused solely on the birth mother’s privacy interests,” the Utah Supreme Court said.

The state supreme court said it was returning the case to the trial court to conduct a balancing “that gives weight to both the birth mother’s privacy interests and Tyson’s reasons for wanting to see her adoption records.”

Law.com covered the case, In re M.A.

As the co-founder of CountryWide Debt Relief, Josh Blandi targeted a specific group of consumers who were struggling financially amid the Great Recession but didn’t qualify for bankruptcy.

The Santa Ana, California-based company, which launched in 2008, helps them consolidate and eliminate their debt. It also assists those who are being sued by their creditors by connecting them to attorneys who can help with debt defense settlements.

Blandi, 45, who studied biology at Hawaii Pacific University before becoming an entrepreneur like his father and grandfather, realized these consumers finished their programs feeling most satisfied, and he hoped to find others facing lawsuits. 

“We went to Westlaw, we went to Lexis, trying to see if we could get a feed of that type of data in a more real-time fashion,” says Blandi, who is still a CountryWide shareholder. “At that time, it really wasn’t possible. So we said, ‘You know what? We’ll start building our own system to collect this from the courts themselves.’”

This idea sparked the creation in 2014 of UniCourt, which gives law firms and businesses real-time access to court records and legal data for case research and tracking, business development, competitive intelligence and various other purposes. 

To provide what’s known as Legal Data as a Service, UniCourt built a platform that collects information about cases, attorneys, law firms, parties and judges from hundreds of state and federal courts, then organizes and standardizes it. The company makes this data available for bulk download via its application programming interfaces, which allow law firms and businesses to integrate the data into their document management and workflow systems.

In addition to the legal industry, UniCourt, which operates with nearly 200 employees, offers its services to the finance, insurance, investigations and media industries and to consumers. It provides access to many court records for free online and offers monthly subscriptions starting at $49.

“One of the most surprising things about UniCourt is it’s a huge business-to-consumer platform,” says Jeff Cox, an attorney and the company’s director of content. “We get 2.5 million people per month coming to check out our free content. It’s lawyers and law firms, but it’s also consumers who need access to information.”

As UniCourt evolved, Blandi encouraged the company to spend more time developing entity normalization, which seeks to tie names in court records to real-world entities. As one example, it recognizes different spellings of an attorney’s name and connects them to the same person. 

UniCourt, based in Tustin, California, also has released a second version of its APIs that enables a user to move easily between a case and analytics on connected entities. It provides access to new analytics—such as case counts by court, time period, case type, attorney, law firm, party and judge—and it introduces new search query language. 

Blandi contends that if he had gone directly into tech, he might not have been as successful. “The opportunity that legal tech presented was because it was so far behind the rest of technology,” he says. “There was so much green pasture, and I still believe there is so much green pasture for people to contribute using technology within the legal sector.”

Blandi spends his free time away from electronic devices surfing, camping and enjoying the outdoors.

Legal Rebels Class of 2023

Stacy Butler

Josh Blandi

Zachariah DeMeola

Sonja Ebron and Debra Slone of Courtroom5

Natalie Anne Knowlton

Uzoma Orchingwa and Gabriel Saruhashi of Ameelio

Patrick Palace

Janis C. Puracal

In This Podcast: