Case Detail
| Case Title | AMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW AND JUSTICE v. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2019cv02643 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2019-09-04 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | Open | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge Rudolph Contreras | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | AMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW AND JUSTICE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Description | American Center for Law and Justice submitted a FOIA request to the FBI for records concerning former FBI director James Comey and communications with Anthony Ferrante, Jordan Rae Kelly, and/or Tashina Gauhar. ACLJ also requested expedited processing and a fee waiver. The agency acknowledged receipt of the request. The agency denied ACLJ's request for a fee waiver. After hearing nothing further from the agency, ACLJ filed suit, alleging the agency had a policy of failing to respond to FOIA requests on time. Complaint issues: Failure to respond within statutory time limit, Adequacy - Search, Litigation - Vaughn index, Litigation - Attorney's fees | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Complaint attachment 4 Complaint attachment 5 Opinion/Order [15] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge Rudolph Contreras has ruled that the American Center for Law and Justice failed to show that the FBI had a pattern or practice of refusing to respond to requests within the statutory time limit and then forcing requesters to file suit if they wanted to pursue their request. As the basis for its pattern and practice claim, ACLJ explained that it had requested records from the FBI in 2016 concerning an unscheduled meeting between then Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport. Eight months later, as a result of a related suit against the Justice Department, ACLJ discovered the FBI had responsive records. The FBI eventually provided 29 redacted responsive pages. The other ACLJ FOIA request, submitted in 2017, asked for records concerning the agency's decision not to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. The FBI did not respond to that request until ACLJ filed suit. Addressing the pattern or practice claim, Contreras explained that there were three D.C. Circuit decisions recognizing a pattern or practice claim â€" Payne Enterprises v. United States, 837 F.2d 486 (D.C. Cir. 1988), Newport Aeronautical Sales v. Dept of Air Force, 684 F.3d 160 (D.C. Cir. 2012), and Judicial Watch v. Dept of Homeland Security, 895 F.3d 770 (D.C. Cir. 2018). In Judicial Watch, the D.C. Circuit recognized the possibility that a plaintiff could show that an agency had a pattern or practice of ignoring FOIA requests. Relying on Judicial Watch, ACLJ argued that the FBI had shown a pattern or practice of failing to take the statutory time limits seriously. But Contreras observed that "the Court is not convinced that these episodes allow the required inference. First, ACLJ's three prior examples each implicate requests of strikingly different subject matter and scope. . .This contrasts markedly with Payne, Newport, and Judicial Watch, each of which concerned repeated requests for a narrowly-defined class of documents. . .To be sure, the Circuit has never articulated a 'single subject' or 'single type of request' requirement for a policy-or-practice claim. But the similarity of the underlying requests is a factor courts take into consideration, as it suggests that the agency's behavior stems from a considered decision (for example, the applicability of a particular exemption to a particular category of documents) rather than isolated mistakes. And even in Judicial Watch, which arguably widened the standard for a policy-or-practice claim beyond Payne and Newport, the majority and concurrence both emphasized that the records all concerned the same subject matter." Continuing, Contreras pointed out that "the FBI's behavior across each of the three episodes was not uniform, and ACLJ's complaint does not consistently identify or describe the offensive practice." He added that "but here, particularly in light of the small sample size, the variation in the three cases cuts against an inference that the FBI is acting pursuant to an informal or formal policy, and, by definition, undermines the contention that the FBI us engaged in a persistent practice." He rejected ACLJ's contention that the FBI's constant failure to respond within the statutory time limit inferred a pattern or practice policy. Contreras disagreed, noting that "here, ACLJ's argument boils down to the contention that the FBI, like many agencies engaged in repeat litigation with regular FOIA litigants, has violated FOIA multiple times in different ways in response to three novel kinds of requests. To the Court's knowledge, an agency policy or practice has never been inferred from such a diversity of conduct." Contreras indicated that "ACLJ's most plausible argument rests on the idea that Judicial Watch makes persistent or prolonged delay itself actionable regardless of the kind of request or reason for the delay. . .However, notwithstanding some of its language, Judicial Watch did not rely on missed deadlines alone; rather it conducted a fact- and context-sensitive analysis that focused on the similar and straightforward nature of the requests and the sheer number of times they were ignored. . .And here, there is little, if anything, beyond the delays themselves that 'could signal the agency has a policy or practice of ignoring FOIA's requirements.'" Contreras concluded by recognizing an alternative remedy for such routine failure to respond on time. He observed that "the Court does not endorse or excuse the FBI's alleged noncompliance. But FOIA offers its own mechanism for disciplining an agency's unjustified conduct in individual cases: fee awards. This counsels against inferring a policy or practice from a small number of episodes."
Issues: Litigation - Jurisdiction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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