The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Tuesday reversed a lower court’s decision allowing the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to withhold the names of its pentobarbital suppliers.

BOP withheld the names of the pentobarbital suppliers, claiming justification under Exemption 4 of FOIA, which allows the government to withhold confidential commercial information including trade secrets and financial information. The DOJ argued that the information was confidential because the companies which with the government contracts have historically kept this information private.

Overall, the court emphasized that solely the name of a supplier is not confidential information. The court explained that Exemption 4 only applies to information involving “the exchange of goods or services or the making of a profit” and held that the DOJ had not provided evidence that the supplier names falls under this category.

Nonprofit organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) after the agency refused to disclose its suppliers of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital. The group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2019 to obtain information on how the federal government would obtain pentobarbital after authorities announced that the government would resume executions using the drug. Pentobarbital was used to execute 13 people from 2020 to 2021.