In 2015 Lexington Herald-Leader reporter John Cheves published the story linked below. It may be helpful in putting the Argus Leader v. Food Marketing Institute case in a local context.
In it, Cheves focused on the state agency that administers the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, and it's questionable policy of maintaining the secrecy of records identifying supermarkets and other stores participating in the WIC Program that had been penalized or disqualified from the program for various violations.
According to The Herald-Leader, these included overcharging WIC customers, allowing WIC customers to buy liquor or cigarettes, failing to maintain required groceries on shelves, and selling expired food.
The Cabinet denied the newspaper's 2015 request for records identifying the stores, releasing heavily redacted records that masked the information. The Cabinet maintained that a federal regulation prohibited disclosure of the stores' identities or identifying information such as addresses.
Former Cabinet officials and lawyers disputed the Cabinet's interpretation of the regulation and its official position in 2015, noting that the regulation expressly permits disclosure of the stores' names and other identifiers.
They voiced frustration at the ability of WIC violators to maintain anonymity and avoid accountability while other businesses, like nursing homes and daycares, are held accountable through public records when they are penalized.
Cheves quoted former CHFS inspector general and then state Rep. Robert Benvenutti:
"As taxpayers, those are our tax dollars spent in the WIC Program. So we have every right to know how this program works, and how it doesn't work, and how much fraud and abuse exists. . . . Without transparency, we will never know any of this."
Unfortunately, these same arguments were not sufficient to overcome the Food Marketing Institute's argument to the US Supreme Court that records containing similar information about stores that participate in SNAP are "confidential" — even in the absence of evidence of substantial harm from disclosure — under the Freedom of Information Act exemption.
