After winning a decisive appellate court battle that required the Florida Department of Health to turn over COVID-19 data withheld from the public during the height of the pandemic, the legal battle over the records has ended with a settlement agreement.
On Aug. 16, 2021, FLCGA made the same public records request of the Department for all of Florida’s 67 counties and was denied for the same reasons.
On Aug. 31, 2021, the FLCGA and Smith filed suit against the state health department over the denied release of public records.
…news outlets including the Associated Press, USA Today, New York Times and the Washington Post filed a motion to intervene in the case to support the FLCGA and Rep. Smith in their pursuit of public records that detail COVID-19’s spread throughout Florida. The parent companies for the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Bay Times, and television company Scripps Media joined in the motion. The First Amendment Foundation also joined.
The settlement agreement requires the Department to provide detailed COVID-19 data for the next 3 years
Shit the CDC isn’t even providing that data anymore
Here’s a link to the actual article
Future generations will never understand how we waxed so on and on about justice and how this kind of “justice” was commonplace.
“The Department lied about the existence of these public records in court…”
To me, this is a tremendous issue. This is perjury. Government agencies showing disrespect for court oaths is wholly unacceptable. Perjury at this level justifies prison time.
Not to mention: they targeted a state health official and her family with a SWAT raid because she was making DeSantis look bad by calling out the falsification.
THAT is the authoritarianism that everyone is warning against. It’s not coming. It’s already here, and it has been for years.
