Appeals court upholds ruling barring IRS from sharing data with ICE

A federal appeals court on Tuesday affirmed a lower court decision that blocks the Internal Revenue Service from sharing certain information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The injunction prevents the IRS from turning over data sought by ICE in a broad records request.

ICE had asked for the last known addresses for millions of people, a demand the courts have now found to be sufficiently expansive to justify blocking the transfer. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with the lower court’s judgment and upheld the restriction.

By sustaining the lower court’s ruling, the appeals court kept in place the prohibition on the IRS providing the requested address information to ICE. The decision leaves intact the judicial barrier to sharing the particular set of taxpayer-derived location records sought by the immigration agency.

The case centers on the scope of agency-to-agency data sharing and the limits courts will place on large-scale requests for personal information. The appeals court’s action preserves the existing restraint on the IRS-ICE exchange that had been imposed by the lower court.