Capitol News

The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on Mon. against the University of Michigan for violating MI’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  

In the lawsuit, the foundation alleges that the U of M withheld a large portion of documents and information relating to research and data surrounding COVID-19- data which would serve to support the state’s lockdown measures.  

When the measures were first announced by Gov. Whitmer in May as a part of the MI Safe Start Plan, many questioned the “science and data” used by Whitmer’s office to justify the measures. Whitmer’s office did not disclose the information. However, an important distinction must be made-the information Whitmer’s office used was collected by officials at the U of M. While Whitmer’s office is exempt from releasing their COVID-19 information received from the university (as granted by the FOIA), the U of M is not. In this distinction lies the lawsuit with the Mackinac foundation. 

The Mackinac Center first requested COVID-19 data and certain email correspondences from the U of M on May 13, and filed a second request on May 27. The university replied with a delivery date of Aug. 20 and an approximate cost of $2294 for the two requests. After a payment error on part of the university, the documents were sent on Oct. 5. However, the documents were heavily redacted, which the university stated were due to a “frank communications” exemption. 

The Center filed an appeal to this decision, and received additional documents- also heavily redacted. Policy lead for the Center Steve Delie called for transparency, stating “There has understandably been a lot of speculation surrounding the inconsistencies in Gov. Whitmer’s COVID-19 response plans.” He called for access to the information, adding “The public deserves to know what data was used as the basis for these decisions that impacted their lives and livelihoods.” The lawsuit is currently ongoing.