CPI and LatinoJustice sue FEMA for withholding María data

On July 31, 2018, on behalf of the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) and LatinoJustice, the Democracy Forward Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for failing to disclose detailed information on its response to Hurricane María in Puerto Rico.

“FEMA has tried to evade its responsibility, has ignored our information requests for almost six months,” said Carla Minet, then CPI executive director. The organizations ask why housing-repair assistance was denied to so many people, which municipalities concentrate denials and the demographic, racial and gender profile of those who sought help without receiving it.

FOIA requests were filed almost six months earlier. They seek FEMA preparation and response documents on María; copies and drafts of FEMA’s Catastrophic Hurricane Plan for Puerto Rico; and materials on the need for Spanish translations of assistance pamphlets, among others. The agency did not deliver the information despite the legal deadline having passed, according to the suit.

“The lack of transparency… is part of a larger negligence by the federal government, particularly FEMA,” said Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan of LatinoJustice PRLDEF. Javier Guzmán of Democracy Forward held that the scant information disclosed does not meet transparency requirements. The suit responds to reports that FEMA was “very unprepared” and lacked “situational awareness,” despite public claims that the administration “sprang into action.”

On September 20, 2017 María made landfall and wiped out the electric grid; CPI recalls estimates of thousands of deaths. A FOIA lawsuit is not a judgment on the merits of the response, nor does it convert a federal obligation into a disbursement, nor equate to theft.