Carter Ledyard pro bono client The American Historical Association served as a co-plaintiff with the states of Washington and Oregon, and dozens of Pacific Northwest Indian tribes and other community organizations in challenging the sale by the federal government of Seattle’s National Archives facility, which would have resulted in the dispersal of millions of irreplaceable undigitized records to two other facilities not easily accessible to residents of the Pacific Northwest.
On Feb 16, 2021, Judge John C. Coughenour, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, issued a preliminary injunction halting the sale, saying the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their assertion that the federal government acted unlawfully when it decided to sell the National Archives facility and scatter the archival records of the region thousands of miles away without consultation with users of the records, local authorities or any of the Indian tribes who rely on the records for determining core tribal functions and cultural preservation.
The American Historical Association is represented by Carter Ledyard counsel Alison Dreizen.