Court Dismisses Heritage Foundation Case for Prince Harry’s Immigration Records — Rejects Analogy to George Gibney in ‘Muchnick v. Dept. of Homeland Security’

Earlier this year we told you of the Freedom of Information Act litigation by the Heritage Foundation to acquire the government files on why Prince Harry was so quickly able to relocate to the U.S. in the midst of his spat with others in the royal family.

The plaintiffs cited our successful showing, in the FOIA for material from former Irish Olympic swimming coach George Gibney’s alien file, of how the public interest in disclosure outweighed a presumptive right to privacy. U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols, in the District of Columbia, seemed to agree with Heritage, at least to the extent of undertaking the same in camera review of the disputed documents that Judge Charles R. Breyer, in the Northern District of California, had done in Muchnick v. Department of Homeland Security.

But Judge Nichols arrived at a different finding. In a September 23 ruling, the full text of which can be read here, the court said Prince Harry’s privacy interest outweighs any possible public interest in how the visa process unfolded.

Though “Heritage insists” on the direct applicability of the standard in the Gibney case, Nichols held, there is a key difference. For Gibney — whom I call the most notorious at-large sex criminal in sports history, and whose two-continent quasi-fugitive story is told in two chapters of my new book — privacy interest was “diminished” by virtue of the fact that, as Judge Breyer put it, “Anyone who bothers Googling his name can get their hands on the sordid details of his alleged crimes.”