New Court Ruling on Arab Boycott

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled that the government was wrong in its recent rejection of a request by the American Jewish Congress to examine reports on compliance with the Arab boycott filed under the Export Administration Act of 1 96 9. If the ruling is not appealed, it means that thousands of reports on participation in the Arab boycott between 1 96 9 and 1 976 will become available for public inspection, the AJCongress said.

The request for the reports was originally made in 1 975 under the Freedom of Information Act. It was denied by the Department of Commerce on the ground that the boycott reports were “confidential.”

The AJCongress then brought suit against the Commerce Department in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, charging that the government was a “silent partner” in the Arab boycott by refusing to release reports filed by American companies of requests to discriminate against U.S. firms that trade with Israel.

The AJCongress brief argued that the question was not whether information that was truly confidential could be disclosed, but whether the information requested could be withheld merely by placing a label on it as confidential, whether or not that was the case. The AJCongress last the first round in the courts. On April 30, 1 976, United States District Court Judge Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr. dismissed the complaint.

An Appeal was taken to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Briefs were filed and argument was heard on March 1, 1 977. Just a little over a year later, a unanimous three-judge panel of the court handed down its 18-page decision, reversing the District Court, by Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III.