The Trump administration has allied itself with the business groups seeking to overturn an appeals court precedent that has allowed the release of business-provided data for nearly half a century. Media outlets and transparency advocates have pushed back against the effort, warning that reining in access to such information could eliminate public scrutiny of an untold number of federal databases and other records about highly regulated, potentially dangerous industries.
In 1974, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an exemption for “confidential” business records did not apply to information that simply wasn’t public. The exemption, the judges said, could be used only in cases where the government would have trouble getting the information in the future or where release of the data would cause “substantial competitive harm.” The decision paved the way for greater public access to information about private businesses.
The Trump administration and business advocates have branded the longstanding decision as “atextual” — a description intended to be taken as a grave insult by the court’s conservative majority. “The average person is supposed to have fair notice of the statute,” Gorsuch complained, suggesting that the D.C. Circuit read words into the law that simply aren’t there.
They are afraid Kavanaugh's beer consumption will be able to be extrapolated from business data.