Case Detail
| Case Title | NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. v. United States Department of Housing and Urban Development | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | Southern District of New York | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Foley Square | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2007cv03378 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2007-04-27 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2007-12-03 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge Gerard E. Lynch | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | United States Department of Housing and Urban Development | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Opinion/Order [23] FOIA Project Annotation: A federal court in New York, finding that the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Housing and Urban Development had properly withheld some records under Exemption 5 (deliberative process privilege), has ruled that the court retained jurisdiction to hear the merits of FOIA litigation originally filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund ten days after the agency failed to respond to the LDF's request for expedited processing for records concerning HUD programs for victims of Hurricane Katrina. After filing its initial action under the expedited processing provisions, LDF and the agency resolved most of the issues without court oversight. The only remaining issue was whether OIG had properly withheld records under Exemption 5. But HUD argued to Judge Gerard Lynch that the court did not have jurisdiction because LDF filed suit too early to provide the court with jurisdiction over the substance of the request, and, further, because LDF had failed to send its request to OIG instead of the main HUD FOIA office. Addressing the agency argument concerning the court's jurisdiction to hear the entire case, Lynch noted that "efficiency would be reduced, not increased, by forcing the litigant to return to the agency to pursue an administrative appeal, after judicial intervention has already been invoked to review the FOIA request, and the federal court has already become familiar with the underlying request during the course of the litigation." He then pointed out that § 552(a)(6)(E)(iii) provided that a district court would not have jurisdiction "to review an agency denial of expedited processing of a request for records after the agency has provided a complete response to the request." He interpreted this to mean that "an agency's substantive response to the underlying FOIA request does not negate the court's ability to review the agency's determination unless and until that response is 'complete' â€" the inclusion of 'complete' in this provision was presumably intended to provide for judicial review over the substantive merits of the agency's disclosure. Here, LDF claims that the government's disclosure was not complete; if LDF is correct, then OIG has not made a 'complete' disclosure, and the Court therefore retains authority to review LDF's claim under the plain language of the statute." The agency cited Judicial Watch v. Naval Observatory, 160 F. Supp. 2d 111 (D.D.C. 2001), for the proposition that a suit brought to challenge the denial of expedition was not equivalent to a constructive exhaustion of administrative remedies as to all other aspects of the request. But Lynch said the case was "unpersuasive" and noted that the plain language of the statute was inconsistent with its conclusion. He pointed out that "there is no support in the statute, or in the case law, for defendant's interpretation â€" FOIA itself authorizes courts to review an agency's expedited request determination, just as it authorizes courts to review an agency's standard request determination, and that authority extends until the agency has made complete disclosure of the requested material (unless the material is otherwise protected under FOIA's exemptions)." He added that "judicial review of an agency's failure to comply with the expedited processing time limit prevent[s] federal agencies from 'paying lip service to a requester's statutory and regulatory entitlement to expedition.'" The agency also argued that LDF had failed to send its FOIA request directly to the OIG, as required by agency regulations. As a result, the agency claimed LDF had failed to exhaust its administrative remedies as to OIG. However, Lynch rejected the argument, noting that HUD's FOIA regulations further indicated that the agency would forward a misaddressed request to the appropriate component within ten days. Lynch indicated that "the HUD regulations at issue here expressly cure such a mistake; indeed, those regulations require the agency itself to cure the requester's mistake by forwarding the request to the appropriate office." Turning to the exemption claim itself, Lynch chided the agency for its initial failure to provide an adequate explanation of its exemption claim, but concluded that subsequent affidavits provided sufficient basis for concluding the withheld information was indeed both predecisional and deliberative.
Issues: Exemption 5 - Privileges - Deliberative process privilege - Deliberative | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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