Case Detail
| Case Title | LARDNER v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2003cv00180 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2003-02-04 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2005-03-31 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge John D. Bates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | GEORGE LARDNER, JR. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Opinion/Order [31] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge John Bates has ruled that the Justice Department may invoke both the presidential communications privilege on behalf of the president and the deliberative process privilege to protect a handful of records pertaining to executive pardons during the Reagan administration. But Bates also concluded that the names of unsuccessful pardon applicants and those who provided information in support of pardon applications are not protected under either Exemption 6 (invasion of privacy) or Exemption 7(C) (invasion of privacy concerning law enforcement records) and that the disclosure of the names is in the public interest. Bates was ruling in a case brought by Washington Post reporter George Lardner, who is writing a book on the use of presidential pardon power. Lardner had requested records from 1960-1989. While the agency withheld a number of records initially, after Lardner filed suit it released all records prior to the Reagan administration. However, it continued to withhold Reagan era records under Exemption 5 (privileges), Exemption 6 and Exemption 7(C). During the course of Lardner's litigation, the government asked Bates to stay proceedings until the D.C. Circuit ruled in Judicial Watch v. Dept. of Justice, 365 F.3d 1108 (D.C. Cir. 2004), a case involving access to pardon records. In that case, the D.C. Circuit held that only records that were sent to the president and his advisors qualified for the presidential communications privilege, while records that never made it that far were not covered by the presidential communications privilege but might still be protected by the deliberative process privilege. Lardner argued that the president had to invoke the presidential communications privilege personally and that his authority to do so could not be delegated to the Pardon Attorney. While Lardner claimed that because case law required the president to personally invoke the privilege in the context of civil discovery and he should be required to do so as well in a FOIA context, Bates observed that there was a distinct difference between the two. He noted that "there will be many cases in which a document should be withheld under Exemption 5 of FOIA because it falls 'within the ambit' of the privilege, but the document nonetheless would be discoverable in certain circumstances in civil litigation." Bates indicated that "the personal invocation of the presidential communications privilege is [ ] a civil discovery rule that should not be imported into the FOIA analysis. First, the central question is always whether the records at issue are pardon documents that 'fall within the ambit' of the presidential communications privilege (such that they would not be 'routinely or normally' available in civil discovery). There is no indication that this language turns not only on the content or nature of a document generally, but also on the manner in which the exemption is raised in a particular request. For the deliberative process privilege, the D.C. Circuit has emphasized that the application of Exemption 5 'depends on the factual content and purpose of the requested document.' The Supreme Court has applied a similar rule to other FOIA statutory exemptions. The Court finds no reason why a different rule should apply to the Exemption 5 presidential communications privilege." He added that "there is also a critical difference between the government's invocation of a privilege in civil discovery and its decision to withhold documents under FOIA. The former is an act of resistance to the disclosure of information in a judicial proceeding. . .The latter is a decision to withhold a document from disclosure under a statute through which the government has chosen to make government records available to the public outside of discovery (subject to certain exceptions). An agency does not invoke a privilege against discovery when it withholds a document under one of the exemptions, because there is no discovery to resist. Instead, the agency simply makes the determination that a statutory provision protects the documents from disclosure, and withholds the documents on that ground." In a passage that is relevant to the delegation of denial authority in any agency, Bates observed that "there is no indication in the text of the statute or elsewhere that Congress anticipated â€" much less demanded â€" that the decision to withhold documents under Exemption 5 would need to be made personally by the head of the agency (in this case the President). . .[C]ourts routinely accept a declaration from an employee at the agency other than a high-level official as documentation of an Exemption 5 deliberative process claim. . .There is simply no basis in law or practice for believing that the personal invocation of a privilege is a prerequisite to withholding under FOIA." Bates added that requiring the president to invoke the privilege would be burdensome and would create separation of powers concerns. He concluded that "the President need not personally invoke the presidential communications privilege for the government to withhold documents that fall within the ambit of the privilege under Exemption 5 of FOIA." Bates rejected Lardner's claim that privileges eroded over time. He disagreed with Lardner's suggestion that after 15 years such privileges should be considered significantly diminished. He noted that "while this Court does not doubt that there will be many instances where communications among presidential staff (or other executive officials) would be admissible in litigation when they are more than 15 years old, the Court is unconvinced that the showing would be so routine that a blanket 15-year statute of limitations on the presidential communications and deliberative process privileges should be recognized under Exemption 5." The agency had withheld several letters from judges or independent counsels expressing their views on various applicants. Lardner claimed that since neither were "agencies" for purposes of FOIA, they could not be encompassed within Exemption 5. The agency had relied on Ryan v. Dept. of Justice, 617 F.2d 781 (D.C. Cir. 1980), in which the D.C. Circuit had ruled that responses from Senators solicited by the Justice Department concerning judicial nominations could be withheld because they were part of the agency's consultative process. Lardner argued the Supreme Court's decision in Dept. of Interior v. Klamath, 532 U.S. 1(2001), in which the Court ruled that correspondence between Indian tribes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs could not be protected because it reflected the self-interest of the tribes rather than providing advice to the agency, had reversed Ryan. Bates disagreed, pointing out that "withholding the documents in this case falls entirely within the rule of Ryan, and is fully consistent with the reasoning in Klamath. The recommendation letters at issue here were 'submitted by outside consultants as part of the deliberative process' and were 'solicited by the agency,' and therefore they qualify as intra-agency documents under Ryan." He explained that "fairly read, the holding in Klamath is only that a communication from an 'interested party' seeking a Government benefit 'at the expense of other applicants' is not an intra-agency record." The agency had withheld names of unsuccessful pardon applicants and individuals who had provided information about applicants under Exemptions 6 and 7(C). Bates rejected those claims, noting that "the pardon application materials can be expected to contain highly personal information about an applicant that implicates privacy concerns. It is far more difficult to understand, and defendant does not explain, how the mere fact that an individual has sought a pardon reveals 'sensitive personal information' about the individual amounting to a 'clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.'" He pointed out that "the conviction that the pardon applicant is seeking to annul was itself public, and it cannot be thought that the information that the individual was later denied a pardon application adds much additional embarrassment beyond the original conviction. Finally, the identities of the successful pardon applicants are disclosed to the public. Defendant is unable to explain what it is about the names of the unsuccessful applicants that uniquely implicates personal information sensitive enough to bring the records within Exemption 6." In a footnote, Bates rejected the argument that an unsuccessful pardon would serve as a reminder of the original conviction and, thus, would be a protectible privacy interest under Reporters Committee. Bates observed that "it would stretch Reporters Committee well past recognition to apply it to a case where information is sought that does not compile sensitive information, but might only remind one of public but sensitive information." While Bates recognized that disclosing names of individuals who provided information to support an application could chill candor in future applications, he indicated that "the concern that disclosure might undermine the pardon selection process may be a reason to enlarge the deliberative process privilege to include certain deliberations between the government and a private party. But it is not a reason to expand Exemption 6 to situations where there is not a sufficient privacy interest at stake."
Opinion/Order [33]Issues: Exemption 5 - Privileges, Exemption 6 - Invasion of privacy, Exemption 7(C) - Invasion of privacy concerning law enforcement records | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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