White House suffers loss in e-mail case

US District Judge Henry Kennedy on Monday ruled against the Bush administration in a court battle over the White House's problem-plagued e-mail system and will allow lawsuits filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive to move forward. The groups are pressing the government to recover millions of possibly missing electronic messages. CREW and the National Security Archive want a court order directing the archivist of the United States to initiate action through the attorney general to restore deleted e-mails. Judge Kennedy said the two private groups seek precisely the relief outlined in the Federal Records Act and upheld in a previous case by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.