Justices void photo-release order

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday vacated a lower court ruling that would have required the government to release photographs showing the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The decision was three sentences long and unsigned, and it followed the enactment of a law in October allowing the secretary of defense to block the pictures' release. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New York, for further consideration in light of the new law.

The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, which makes disclosure of information in the hands of the executive branch mandatory unless an exemption applies. The 2nd Circuit ordered the photos released last year, and the Justice Department initially recommended against an appeal to the Supreme Court.

But President Barack Obama overruled his lawyers, saying his national security advisers had persuaded him that releasing the photos would inflame anti-American sentiment abroad and endanger American troops. Some of the pictures, according to a government brief, showed "soldiers pointing pistols or rifles at the heads of hooded and handcuffed detainees," a soldier who appears to be striking a detainee with the butt of a rifle, and a soldier holding a broom "as if sticking its end" into a prisoner's rectum.

In the 2nd Circuit, the government relied on an exemption to the freedom of information law that applies to "information compiled for law enforcement purposes" that "could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual."

Judge John Gleeson, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit last year, said the exemption required a specific anticipated danger. The exemption "may be flexible, but it is not vacuous," Gleeson wrote. Referring to "a population the size of two nations and two international expeditionary forces combined," he said, is insufficient.

The government's reading, the judge added, would create "an alternative secrecy mechanism far broader than the government's classification system."

The Supreme Court's summary order in the case, Department of Defense v. ACLU, No. 09-160, did not address whether that ruling was correct. It merely said the new law required reconsideration of the case.