An National Rifle Association logo is displayed above members during the NRA annual meeting of members in Indianapolis on April 27. Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, a nonpartisan gun safety group, has filed a Freedom of Information Act suit seeking records of U.S. government employees' communications with the National Rifle Association of America and other gun lobbyists after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, last year.

The federal suit, filed Oct. 16, states, "The requested records will shed light on topics of vital national importance. Everytown seeks to learn the extent to which the DOJ's policy choices are informed or influenced by gun lobby access to government decision-makers, and why certain gun safety initiatives have been abandoned."

It alleges that the U.S. Department of Justice has failed to produce the records in response to 18 months of requests from Everytown. The Justice Department, which usually does not talk about ongoing litigation, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

"The public has a right to know what these public records contain," Everytown's in-house counsel Eric Tirschwell told Corporate Counsel on Thursday. Tirschwell oversees 13 litigators as managing director of litigation and national enforcement policy at Everytown Law, the litigation arm of the support fund.

Tirschwell said, "The Trump administration's choices on gun policy have major consequences for public safety, and the public deserves to know the extent to which the gun lobby is influencing those choices."

The suit also seeks records pertaining to the abandonment of gun violence prevention initiatives that were launched during the Obama administration.

The suit alleges, "DOJ's failure to provide any substantive response about whether or not it will comply with Everytown's requests, which have been pending for a year and a half, serves to constructively exhaust Everytown's administrative remedies." In other words, Everytown cannot appeal the Justice Department decision, if so desired, until a decision is issued.

The suit details numerous contacts between Everytown and the department offering to narrow the scope of the requests and to take other measures to expedite production, but so far to no avail.

Everytown is asking the court to:

• Order the Justice Department to disclose the records requested.
• Set a schedule for producing requested records to Everytown.
• Award Everytown its costs and reasonable attorney's fees.
• Expedite the proceeding.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Everytown lawyers Alla Lefkowitz and Aaron Esty, based in New York.

They were joined in the complaint by Murad Hussain, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, and other attorneys from the law firm. Hussain said he would let the complaint speak for itself.

Everytown Law calls itself the "largest team of litigators in the country dedicated full-time to advocating to advance gun safety in the courts and through the criminal and civil justice systems."

In ongoing litigation around the country, it is challenging gun laws it considers dangerous, defending gun safety laws in Second Amendment and preemption challenges, and representing survivors of gun violence seeking accountability and reform.

In an August ruling in a separate lawsuit, Everytown Law won a major federal court decision that overturned the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' refusal to produce data from its firearms tracing database. The decision is the first federal court decision to hold that a 2003 congressional appropriations law known as the Tiahrt Rider cannot be used to withhold data under the Freedom of Information Act.