Case Detail
| Case Title | CLEVELAND v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2013cv01627 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2013-10-24 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2015-09-11 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge Reggie B. Walton | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | DAVID LAUNDON CLEVELAND | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Description | Cleveland, a volunteer immigration attorney with Catholic Charities, requested a copy of the State Department's "Country Report" for Cameroon in September 2012. After receiving nothing more than an acknowledgement letter from State, Cleveland appealed the denial of his request in April 2013. State responded to his appeal by indicating that since there was nothing yet to appeal his only remedy was to go to court. Complaint issues: exhaustion of administrative remedies, adequacy of search, 20-day time limit, enjoin agency's pattern and practice of violating 20-day time li, attorney's fees | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Opinion/Order [21] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge Reggie Walton has ruled that the Department of State conducted an adequate search for records concerning a 2011 human rights report about Cameroon and properly withheld most of the records under Exemption 5 (deliberative process privilege) and Exemption 6 (invasion of privacy). David Cleveland requested the report and two years later the State Department processed 56 documents, withholding 37 documents in full. To locate the documents it found, the agency conducted searches that included the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the Bureau of African Affairs, and the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon. Walton indicated that the agency's affidavit "demonstrates the State Department's thorough and methodological approach in responding to each component of the plaintiff's FOIA request. . .[I]n processing each element of the plaintiff's request, the State Department considered 'which offices, overseas posts, or other records systems. . .[would] reasonably be expected to contain the records requested,' and subsequently searched these entities using search terms and discrete time periods. Moreover, based on the specificity of the plaintiff's request, the State Department explicitly searched the Central Foreign Policy Records despite its prior conclusion that it was unlikely that this repository contained responsive records. Thus, based upon the search described [in the agency's affidavit], the Court finds that the State Department's declaration provides sufficient factual detail of the methods utilized in conducting searches for responsive documents . . ." Cleveland challenged the adequacy of the search, arguing that the agency had not provided any of the records he specifically requested and that there was no evidence State consulted any outside groups in assessing the human rights situation in Cameroon. Walton rejected the claims, noting that "the fact that the State Department's searches did not produce the specific documents the plaintiff sought does not render the search inadequate." Cleveland also argued the agency should have located at least as many documents as had been involved in another similar suit in New York in 2012. In a footnote, Walton sharply criticized State for not addressing Cleveland's claim in this regard, indicating that "if the plaintiff's assertion regarding the inadequacy of the State Department's searches [in the other case] was legally supported, the Court would normally deem this argument conceded by the State Department. However, because the plaintiff's position is not legally supported, and is, in fact, the proverbial comparison between apples and oranges, the Court cannot deem it conceded. There is simply no basis for the argument that because one FOIA request pertaining to the Human Rights Report of county X yielded a specific number of documents while a similar request of the Human Rights Reports of County Y yielded fewer documents, the person requesting documents pertaining to Country Y is entitled to the same number of documents as produced regarding Country X." Walton said he had expected the agency to address this issue in its brief, and observed that "it was certainly not the Court's expectation that the State Department would simply recycle its original opposition, adding only a Response to the Plaintiff's Statement of Material Facts, and fashion it as a reply." Cleveland had conceded that the records probably qualified for the deliberative process privilege and Walton agreed the documents were covered. Walton also concluded that the agency had conducted a proper segregability analysis and had shown that no further information could be disclosed.
Issues: Adequacy - Search, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Deliberative process privilege - Deliberative | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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