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02/8/2017

Defining a “Record” under FOIA

The Freedom of Information Act has provided the public with access to federal agency records since the mid-1960s.  As hard as it may be to believe, the definition of a “record” is still not established.  There has been a great deal of litigation over the definition of an “agency record” (as opposed to, for example, a congressional record or a personal record), as those are the only types of records that are accessible through FOIA.[1]  But the antecedent question—what exactly is a “record”—has not been litigated.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recognized this gap in its important decision last year in American Immigration Lawyers Association v. Executive Office for Immigration Review (“AILA”).[2]  In that case, the circuit court held that agencies may not use “non-responsive” as a redaction tool to withhold information within an otherwise responsive record.  I discussed that issue in a previous post titled There is No Tenth Exemption.  The circuit court, however, did not define a “record” in that case.

Cause of Action Institute filed a FOIA request with the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to determine how it would respond to AILA and how it would attempt to define a “record.”  We asked for an email chain that the agency had previously produced to us with most of the information redacted as non-responsive.  In making this second request, we specifically asked for the entire email chain and drew the DOJ’s attention to the AILA decision.  Instead of removing the offending “non-responsive” redactions, however, the DOJ contended that each email in the chain—and in fact each header of each email—was a separate record.  The agency then withheld those supposedly separate records as “non-responsive.”  Compare the full original here and the full re-produced record here.  This approach makes a mockery of AILA; so we filed suit.  

Today, CoA Institute filed its Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment arguing among other matters that the DOJ’s approach to defining a record is untenable.  The DOJ has taken the position, in recently issued guidance from its Office of Information Policy, that the interplay between the subject matter of the request and the content of agency documents define the “nature of a FOIA record” in response to that request.  The agency’s position, in other words, is that a FOIA record is defined—indeed, that the “record” comes into being—through the process of reading and interpreting a request and then searching for and analyzing agency documents to find those portions that contain responsive information.

As we note in our Cross-Motion (pages 25-28), this approach has several problems.  First, it has no basis in the statute.  Second, it conflicts with the rule that requesters may only seek access to records that are already in existence when the request is submitted.  Third, it means that the same, single document could be one record in response to one request, but ten records in response to another.  Finally, it conflicts with one of the venue provisions in FOIA’s judicial review section, rendering it a nullity.

CoA Institute instead proposed its own definition of a record (pages 22-25) that is based on the statute, harmonizes with existing FOIA statutory and case law, and promotes disclosure.  Our approach takes into account that agencies already have material containing information (whether documents, video files, electronic files, etc.) in their control before a request is submitted, that this material exists in a particular form and format, and that agencies must disclose such material as a unit whenever the informational content is responsive to a request (subject to FOIA’s nine exemptions, of course).  Thus, our “complete and proper definition of a ‘record’ under the FOIA is (1) any material containing information, (2) created or obtained by an agency, (3) within an agency’s control when a request is submitted, and (4) in its full native form and format as maintained by an agency at the time of a request, ‘i.e., as a unit’” (page 25).

We also urged the court to continue the practice of denying agencies any deference to their interpretations of FOIA’s statutory terms (pages 19-21).

Click here for the complete filing.

Click here for There is No Tenth Exemption, a previous post in this series.

Update: On October 10, 2017, the district court found the case was moot and did not reach the underlying issues discussed in this post.

James Valvo is Counsel & Senior Policy Advisor at Cause of Action Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @JamesValvo.

 

[1] See Department of Justice v. Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. 136 (1989).

[2] 830 F.3d 667 (D.C. Cir. 2016).

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02/6/2017

This Fisherman Is Battling the Government to Save His Livelihood

The New England and Mid-Atlantic fishing industry is older than the Nation itself. The industry’s regulators, however, have embarked on a project that threatens its imminent destruction.

Meet New Hampshire fisherman David Goethel. The federal government is destroying Mr. Goethel’s industry through overregulation and forcing ground-fishermen like himself to pay $700 per day to have authorities monitor them on their boats. Even the government estimates these additional costs would put 60% of the industry out of business. Cause of Action Institute is helping Mr. Goethel fight back through the courts to save his livelihood. Learn more HERE

#FreeTheFishermen

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02/3/2017

Pitfalls of Politicization

Disregard of legal standards that apply to everyone to achieve immediate political goals is never good. Politicization tends towards pernicious, unpredictable results.  It is particularly erosive when it infects the administration of justice.  Developments in Texas v. United States, a federal case testing the limits of the President’s and Congress’s authority to set immigration policy, demonstrate just how—and how much—politicization can undermine the rule of law.

Back in May 2016, Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas found that lawyers representing the United States made a series of misstatements to the court and the 26 plaintiff States and that those lawyers knew the truth when they spoke. In 2014 and 2015 those lawyers misrepresented, among other things, timing under an executive order that expanded an immigration program to millions of additional persons, most of whom were parents of children born here as citizens, for whom permissible work periods were expanded to three years. Arising from the interplay of immigration, constitutional, and administrative law, the legal issues in Texas v. United States were complex.

But the problematic misrepresentations by the Justice Department’s lawyers were straightforward. The lawyers for the United States said that the immigration authorities wouldn’t start implementing the program before February 2015.  That led the court and 26 States to forego extraordinary proceedings for emergency relief that might have resulted in a restraining order expressly preventing implementation by the federal government.  The same lawyers also misrepresented how many three-year extensions were at issue, and the government granted over 100,000 before the truth came out in court. “[T]he Justice Department lawyers knew the true facts and misrepresented those facts to the citizens of the 26 Plaintiff States, their lawyers and this Court on multiple occasions.”   The misrepresentations enabled the government to do broadly what could have been expressly restrained.

The court, quite reasonably, asked Why? The DOJ gave several reasons, none sufficient.   The scores of government lawyers working on the case “lost focus” on the facts which had “receded in memory or awareness.”  That excuse gives away the cake:  it admits a breach of every lawyer’s duty of competence.  The government’s other excuse was that many lawyers were responsible for the case, spread across multiple agencies.  The government’s disingenuous conclusion was that any remedy should only apply to the handful of lawyers who appeared in court.  Two weeks ago, on the last full day of the Obama administration, the government lost.  The court ruled, “[a]t the very least, the Justice Department should, in an organized manner, require its attorneys to review and understand each state’s ethical rules before those attorneys appear in that state. This is a minimum requirement.”

Indeed, the court’s requirement is, if anything, too minimal and the Justice Department escaped by the skin of its teeth the Court’s more fulsome wrath from May. Commentators who previously administered Justice in prior Republican and Democratic administrations, however, suggest a more plausible, but still insufficient, reason for the misconduct:  politicization at the Department of Justice.   That should trouble everyone, regardless of party affiliation.

The federal government’s omission of facts that have “receded” or “lost focus” in the service of a legal victory for its current political masters must never be acceptable, minimized, or considered “normal” mistakes, regardless of their complexity. Current events show why.  The most troubling aspects of Texas v. United States arose during the Obama administration.  But headlines during the first weeks of the Trump administration reveal the political staying power of at least four horsemen: Executive Orders, judicial review, immigration, and administration representations. Politicization will undermine the validity of them all.

Mike Geske is counsel at Cause of Action Institute

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02/3/2017

Sec. Vilsack followed ethics guidelines when negotiating his future employment

Under the Obama administration, we at Cause of Action Institute have not had many opportunities to applaud public officials for taking it upon themselves to adhere to applicable ethics standards.  This week, we learned that U.S. Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) Secretary Tom Vilsack appears to be an outlier for the administration.

On January 18, 2017, Cause of Action Institute submitted a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request to USDA after media reports indicated that Sec. Vilsack apparently began negotiating for private employment while still serving in government, triggering federal ethics laws.  Sec. Vilsack then retired from his government role a week before his term concluded.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 (“STOCK Act”) states that Executive Branch employees who are required to file public financial reports may not directly negotiate for future employment unless the individual’s ethics office is notified in writing within three business days after negotiations begin.

According to un-redacted records provided to Cause of Action Institute on January 31, 2017, less than two weeks after our FOIA request, Secretary Vilsack appears to have alerted his agency’s ethics office and properly followed all ethics guidelines when he decided to pursue his next employment opportunity.

We wish the Secretary the best in his new role and hope USDA continues to provide timely responses to all future FOIA requests.

John Vecchione is acting president of Cause of Action Institute

 

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01/13/2017

CoA Institute Supports Strong Due Process on College Campuses

In a letter today to Senator Lamar Alexander, Chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) expressed its support for the mission of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (“FIRE”) to “defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities.”

FIRE’s wide-ranging mission seeks to preserve the individual liberties vital to a just and free society, specifically by protecting freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty and sanctity of conscience on America’s college campuses.

The letter states:

“Critics of FIRE’s advocacy for sufficient due process protections for all students—both accusers and accused—fail to acknowledge traditional notions of justice. Justice is not served if adjudications are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused due to their inability to defend themselves from false accusations.  FIRE merely fights for the adoption of due process protections Americans often take for granted in other proceedings: “the right to the active participation of counsel; the right to see the evidence in one’s case and to meaningfully question witnesses; and the right to an impartial tribunal, among others.”

Read the full letter HERE.

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01/12/2017

CoA Institute Urges Supreme Court to Restrict Agency Power

On January 10, 2017 Cause of Action Institute (CoA Institute) joined an amicus brief filed by the Cato Institute (Cato) in the Supreme Court case Gloucester County School Board v. G.G. to comment on an important aspect of administrative law: the scope of the Auer doctrine (taken from the Supreme Court case Auer v. Robbins (1997)), which holds that courts should generally defer to agency interpretations of their own regulations.  The case involves a challenge to a school board’s decision preventing GG, a transgender student, from using the school bathroom corresponding to his preferred gender identity.

After the board made its decision, the U.S. Department of Education weighed in, issuing an interpretive letter.  James Ferg-Cadima, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, stated that “Title IX . . . prohibits recipients of Federal financial assistance from discriminating on the basis of sex, including gender identity, …When a school elects to separate or treat students differently on the basis of sex in those situations, a school generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.”  Thus, according to the letter, Title IX and its regulations would mandate that the school board allow GG to use his preferred bathroom.

GG sued in federal district court, alleging violations of Title IX and the Constitutions’ Equal Protection Clause.  The district court dismissed GG’s claims but on appeal the 4th Circuit overturned this decision and, applying the Auer doctrine, held that the district court should have deferred to the interpretation contained in the Ferg-Cadima letter, as the letter was not plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the statute or agency regulation.  The 4th Circuit so held even though the letter was not subject to any public consideration and was contrary to the prior understanding of Title IX’s requirements.  The case then proceeded to the Supreme Court.

CoA Institute joined with Cato and four law professors to file an amicus brief supporting the school board in order to address the issues related to Auer deference.  The brief calls the Auer doctrine into question and argues in favor of stricter limits on the latitude currently given to agencies interpreting their own regulations.  Among the problems noted by the brief are that this type of deference (1) provides incentives for agencies to issue vague regulations, which they can interpret at will without going through any public notice or comment procedures and (2) undermines the separation of powers by giving agencies the authority to both write regulations, a legislative function delegated by Congress, and to definitively determine their meaning, a judicial function.

You can read the brief here.

Josh Schopf is counsel at Cause of Action Institute

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01/6/2017

DOD revises FOIA policies incorporating CoA Institute recommendations

The Department of Defense (“DOD”) yesterday published an interim rule proposing new regulations to implement the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). The proposed changes are necessary to bring DOD regulations into compliance with the OPEN Government Act of 2007 and the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, but they also build upon two previous attempts by the agency to revise its FOIA procedures and policies.

Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) submitted comments to DOD about these proposed changes in November 2014 and September 2015. We commended the agency for removing outdated “organized and operated” language from its definition of a representative of the news media—especially in light of the D.C. Circuit’s landmark decision in Cause of Action v. Federal Trade Commission—but also suggested clarification and guidance to ensure the proper application of fees in FOIA cases.

We further recommended that DOD revise procedures for conducting consultations, which take place whenever an agency locates records that originated with or may implicate the equities of another government entity. The process is supposed to ensure that exempt information is properly redacted from records prior to disclosure.  We expressed concern that DOD had failed to establish adequate parameters for determining when consultation would be appropriate.

Finally, we asked DOD to remove or revise a number of problematic provisions dealing with the handling of White House information, the use of the deliberative process and attorney-client privileges, and the preservation and management of records subject to the FOIA.

Although DOD did not chose to adopt additional guidance on fee issues, or to limit consultation along the lines we suggested, DOD’s interim rule does reflect CoA Institute’s influence. For example, the agency chose to reformulate its regulations along the lines of a model regulation produced by the Department of Justice. Guidance of this sort is consistent with CoA Institute’s proposals and was referenced by CoA Institute in its comments. Moreover, DOD completely eliminated or adequately revised the problematic, byzantine provisions to which CoA Institute objected.

CoA Institute’s comment is another small step in our efforts to provide effective and transparent oversight of the administrative state.

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