Petaluma, Calif. - On Friday, March 21, the Small Business Administration (SBA) submitted its response to federal lawsuit No. C 08-0829 MHP, which was filed against the agency by the American Small Business League (ASBL). The SBA's response was filed with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

In its response, the SBA declined to provide any rational or legal justification for refusing to provide the names of the firms that received federal small business contracts during 2005 and 2006.

ASBL filed suit against the SBA after the agency refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the ASBL for the specific names of all the firms that received federal small business contracts during 2005 and 2006.

The ASBL is seeking information that will show the Bush Administration diverted billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms. The ASBL believes the information they have requested will prove that billions of dollars in federal small business contracts have actually gone to many of the largest corporations in the United States and Europe.

This latest case is the fourth lawsuit the ASBL has filed against the SBA under FOIA. To date, the ASBL has won all of the federal lawsuits it has brought against the SBA. In previous cases the SBA has tried to withhold information by claiming various FOIA exemptions. In this case, the SBA provided no such justification for withholding the data.

Since 2002, a series of federal investigations have found that the SBA inflated the Bush Administration's small business contracting statistics by including contracts to firms like: Rolls Royce, Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, L3 Communications, Titan Industries and Boeing.

In June of 2007, SBA Administrator Steven Preston adopted a policy that will allow the federal government to continue awarding federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and other corporate giants until the year 2012.

An initial case management conference has been scheduled for Monday, May 19, 2008, at 4:00 p.m.  A Joint Case Management Statement is due ten days prior to the conference.

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