Case Detail
| Case Title | AMERICAN OVERSIGHT v. U.S. POSTAL SERVICE | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2020cv02580 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2020-09-15 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2021-12-09 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge Rudolph Contreras | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | AMERICAN OVERSIGHT | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Description | American Oversight submitted a FOIA request to the U.S. Postal Service for records concerning appointment calendars for Louis DeJoy. The agency acknowledged receipt of the request and told American Oversight that it had no responsive records because DeJoy's appointment calendars were personal records not subject to FOIA. American Oversight filed an administrative appeal. The agency acknowledged receiving the appeal. After hearing nothing from the agency, American Oversight filed suit. Complaint issues: Failure to respond within statutory time limit, Adequacy - Search, Litigation - Vaughn index, Litigation - Attorney's fees | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | U.S. POSTAL SERVICE | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Complaint attachment 4 Opinion/Order [26] FOIA Project Annotation: Ruling in a case brought by American Oversight against the U.S. Postal Service for records concerning Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's calendar entries, Judge Rudolph Contreras has joined several other D.C. Circuit district court judges in restraining the agency's aggressive use of the Postal Reorganization Act, 39 U.S.C. § 410(c)(2), which allows the agency to withhold information that is customarily treated as confidential in a business context, to claim that DeJoy's calendar entries are confidential. American Oversight submitted a FOIA request on July 29, 2020, to the USPS for Dejoy's calendar entries from June 15, 2020, to the date the search was conducted. USPS initially told American Oversight that it had no responsive records because it considered DeJoy's calendar entries were not agency records but personal records. However, after American Oversight filed suit, the agency changed its position and produced a heavily redacted 155-page Vaughn index. USPS justified its redactions under Exemption 3 (other statutes), Exemption 5 (privileges), Exemption 6 (invasion of privacy), and Exemption 7(C) (invasion of privacy concerning law enforcement records), covering twelve distinct categories of the 1,024 meetings on DeJoy's calendar. While the Vaughn index did not provide detail as to which exemptions applied to which meetings, many of the exemption claims relied upon § 410(c)(2) of the PRA, which exempts from disclosure "information of a commercial nature, including trade secrets, whether or not obtained from a person outside the Postal Service, which under good business practice would not be publicly disclosed." American Oversight acknowledged that § 410(c)(2) qualified as an Exemption 3 statute, but contended that the agency had applied it too broadly. Contreras explained that the USPS regulations on whether or not §410(c)(2) applied consisted of six factors, five of which supported withholding, but the sixth factor instructed that material should be disclosed when it "relates primarily to the Postal Service's governmental functions or its activities as a provider of basic public services." USPS contended the majority of the withheld records fit within the parameters of § 410(c)(2) because disclosure "would aid USPS's competitors and harm the Postal Service's ability to compete in the private marketplace" by revealing "the Postmaster General's strategic priorities, the identities of his key counselors and their areas of responsibility, details about his negotiations with potential customers and partners, the frequency and nature of discussions with labor union representatives, subject matter discussed with his legal counsel, and various other sensitive information that no private enterprise would ever publicly reveal under best practices." By contrast, American Oversight found it difficult to believe that none of DeJoy's meetings related primarily to the agency's government functions. Contreras agreed with American Oversight. He noted that "USPS's interpretation of how the [sixth] factor should be considered is so limited it directly contravenes the express purposes of FOIA and runs afoul of the agency's own regulations." Contreras pointed out that "the Court gathers that USPS is able to reach such an extraordinary conclusion that no such meetings were scheduled on Mr. DeJoy's calendar (even in the face of such contemporaneous evidence) due to the extreme definition it employs as to what constitutes governmental functions or basic public services. USPS posits that 'even meetings touching upon matters of public concern are likely to be inextricably intertwined with commercially-sensitive information related to postal rates, funding, operations and logistics.' Consequently, the agency appears to have created an internal standard that the only calendar entries that would fall under this category are, in its own words, those 'exclusively addressing issues of public concern without any corresponding commercial sensitivity.'" Contreras observed that "but this is not what the law requires. First, and foremost, USPS's own regulations direct the agency to weigh whether the information at issue 'relates primarily to the Postal Service's governmental functions or its activities as a provider of basic public services.' A 'primary' relationship to matters of public concern is less demanding than the 'exclusive' relationship standard USPS attempts to create. As American Oversight correctly asserts, this means that where information is primarily related to USPS's public functions, 'the focus or attendees of a meeting [can] have some nexus with commercial activities' without transforming the calendar record into protected commercial information." Contreras indicated that "USPS [should] remember that it is the substance of the calendar entries that is at issue here, not the content of the meetings themselves." He observed that "USPS appears to contend that even if a meeting â€" not the calendar entry â€" touched on items of commercial nature, it would fall into the exemption." He explained that "it strikes the Court as unlikely that this basic calendar entry information could â€" in every instance from a five-month period during which USPS carried out critically important public responsibilities â€" plausibly contain content that is either of a commercial nature or content of public concern that is 'impermissibly intertwined' with sensitive commercial content." Contreras also faulted USPS for its Exemption 5 claims. Addressing the deficiency of its deliberative process privilege claims, he noted that "USPS does not provide even a general description of the specific subject matter of each calendar entry at issue, giving the Court only four broad categories of the types of meetings it has withheld from release." He added that "nor is there any attempt to explain how these calendar entries relate to the overarching deliberative process (and how could it, when no deliberative process is identified). USPS also declines to provide any specific information as to which decisionmakers were involved in the record at issue. Without this information, the Court cannot adequately assess if this information is indeed appropriately covered by this exemption." He found the agency's attorney-client privilege claims fell short as well. He pointed out that "the agency has declined to provide any calendar entry specific details abut the type or nature of the legal advice at issue."
Issues: Exemption 3 - Limited agency discretion, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Deliberative process privilege - Predecisional, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Deliberative process privilege - Deliberative, Exemption 6 - Invasion of privacy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User-contributed Documents | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Docket Events (Hide) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
