Case Detail
| Case Title | GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA, INC, et al v. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2021cv01601 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2021-06-11 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2022-11-28 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge John D. Bates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA, INC. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | GUN OWNERS FOUNDATION, INC. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Description | The Gun Owners of America and the Gun Owners Foundation submitted a FOIA request to the FBI for records concerning communications between the agency and officials of the State Virginia pertaining to a voluntary background check recently established in Virginia. The FBI acknowledged receipt of the request and divided it into four separate requests. In response to the requests, the FBI told Gun Owners that its request was too vague to search. Gun Owners filed administrative appeals of those decisions. After hearing nothing further from the agency, Gun Owners filed suit. Complaint issues: Failure to respond within statutory time limit, Adequacy - Search, Litigation - Vaughn index, Litigation - Attorney's fees | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Complaint attachment 4 Complaint attachment 5 Complaint attachment 6 Complaint attachment 7 Complaint attachment 8 Opinion/Order [10] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge John Bates has ruled that the FBI properly dismissed two FOIA requests submitted by Gun Owners of America because they were either too vague to conduct a search or required the agency to create records but has found that a third request sufficiently described the requested records to allow the agency to conduct a search. Gun Owners of America submitted four FOIA requests. The first request asked for communications between the FBI and the Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General of Virginia between January 2014 and the date the request was processed. The second request asked for communications between the FBI and the Virginia State Police involving the so-called voluntary background check established by state law between July 2015 and the date of processing the request. The third request asked for records related to whether Virginia's voluntary background check system and its implementation complies with state law. The fourth request asked for copies of the last four National Instant Background Check System audits conducted by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division with respect to Virginia. The FBI accepted the fourth request for processing but denied the other three requests as improperly vague or asking for the creation of records. Gun Owners of America filed an administrative appeal but after hearing nothing further from the agency, Gun Owners of America filed suit. Bates first found that the first request for communications between the FBI and state officials in Virginia was indeed too vague to search. But he rejected the agency's argument that it could not conduct a search because the request did not identify the specific officeholders by name. He pointed out that "defendant's attempt to manufacture ambiguity in this way is unavailing. There is only one reasonable interpretation of this request: plaintiffs seek communications between the FBI and then-incumbent officeholders and their staffs. An agency's claim that it is hopelessly torn between a reasonable and an unreasonable reading of a FOIA request will not support a conclusion that the request is deficient." But he agreed with the agency that the language of the request was too vague. He indicated that "by using a vague catch-all instead of identifying a discrete agency or set of employees, Request 1 embeds an intractable uncertainty preventing even the most conscientious and diligent processor from 'determining precisely what records are being requested.'" Bates observed that GOA's attempt to explain in their appeal and brief why the request was actually searchable did nothing to resolve the situation. He pointed out that "plaintiff's recommendation of email domains to search does not grapple with the inherent vagueness of the phrase 'agents and employees of the same.' Even if Request 1 were limited to the email domains plaintiffs suggest, their catch-all request for communications with all 'agents and employees' would still be impermissibly imprecise." He noted that 'more generally, however, plaintiffs cannot point to suggested strategies as evidence that their request is narrower than its terms. A brief cannot amend a FOIA request and subsequent communication with an agency 'must be reasonably clear that its sender intends it to be a new request' in order to limit the scope of the previous request." He observed that "in this case, far from submitting a new request or specifically seeking a narrower set of documents, plaintiffs' administrative appeal plainly asserts that their original request is not overly broad, but instead must be processed as submitted." The second request, which asked for communications between the FBI and the Virginia State Police involving two Virginia background check programs, had also been rejected by the FBI as too vague to conduct a search because it did not identify specific email addresses to search. Bates rejected the claim, noting that "a FOIA request is not deficient just because it does not provide the name or email address of every individual whose communications are sought â€" the request's description need only be 'reasonable' to implicate the agency's obligations under the statute." Bates also dismissed the FBI's contention that the term "involving" was too vague and that "there is a categorical rule barring all requests that use the phrase 'relating to' (or similar phrases)." Bates flatly noted that "this is not the law. That the reasonable description requirement should not be reduced to a categorical test is evident from its terms: courts should rarely deploy a bright-line rule â€" and particularly not one this expansive â€" when determining whether something is 'reasonable.'" He observed that "FOIA requesters are frequently in no position to know how an agency classifies its documents or what terminology the agency might have used â€" that is often why they are making a request in the first place." Bates pointed out that "while agency personnel are not required to deploy clairvoyance, they are obligated to use 'reasonable effort' in fulfilling requests. As such, an agency may not refuse even to begin searching for documents just because the requester did not spell out its requested search parameters." The third request asked for records related to whether Virginia's voluntary background check system and its implementation complied with 28 C.F.R. Section 25.6. The FBI argued that to respond to this request required the agency to create records. Bates indicated he disagreed with the agency, noting that "an agency may not reject a FOIA request that on its face seeks only pre-existing documents just because it implicitly asks a question." Reviewing the relevant case law, Bates observed that "in other words, what matters is not the form of the request but whether compliance would require the creation of new documents." He added that "in short, the Court finds no support in the caselaw for the proposition that an agency may refuse to process a request which, on its face, seeks only pre-existing documents and does not require the creation of new documents." But Bates agreed with the FBI that Request 3 fell afoul of the untethered "related to" description. Finding it too broad to search, Bates indicated that "when a FOIA request is framed using the kind of intrinsically expansive terms used in Request 3, these kinds of limitations are far from superfluous â€" they are essential to give the FBI adequate guidance in locating responsive documents."
Issues: Request - Specificity | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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