Case Detail
| Case Title | The Center for Investigative Reporting et al v. U.S. Department of Labor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | Northern District of California | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Oakland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 4:2019cv01843 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2019-04-05 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2019-12-10 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Magistrate Judge Kandis A. Westmore | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | The Center for Investigative Reporting | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | Will Evans | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Description | Will Evans, a reporter for the Center for Investigative Reporting, submitted a FOIA request to the Department of Labor for records concerning 2016 EEO-1 Consolidated Reports for 55 companies. The agency acknowledged receipt of the request and provided an interim response. However, the agency subsequently told CIR that it was delaying its response until the Supreme Court ruled in FMI v. Argus Leader Media, dealing with the standard for determining competitive harm under Exemption 4 (confidential business information). CIR filed an administrative appeal, but after hearing nothing further from the agency, CIR filed suit. Complaint issues: Litigation - Attorney's fees, Failure to respond within statutory time limit | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | U.S. Department of Labor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Appeal | Ninth Circuit 20-16416 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Appeal | Ninth Circuit 20-16538 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Appeal | Ninth Circuit 20-16826 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Complaint attachment 4 Complaint attachment 5 Complaint attachment 6 Complaint attachment 7 Opinion/Order [30] Opinion/Order [31] Opinion/Order [33] Opinion/Order [39] Opinion/Order [42] Opinion/Order [52] FOIA Project Annotation: A federal court in California has ruled that the Department of Labor has not shown that EEO-1 reports requested by the Center of Investigative Reporting can be withheld under Exemption 4 (confidential business information), even after the Supreme Court, in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, 139 S. Ct. 2356 (2019), replaced the substantial competitive harm test with a customarily confidential standard. In fact, the CIR litigation was stayed by the district court at the request of the Labor Department until the Supreme Court ruled in Argus Leader. CIR reporter Will Evans asked for federal contractors' employment diversity reports, known at EEO-1 reports, for 55 named companies. Labor told CIR that only 36 of the named 55 companies were federal contractors. Because the EEO-1 reports contained confidential business information, the agency sent pre-disclosure notification letters to all 36 companies. Twenty companies responded to the pre-disclosure notification letters, claiming they considered the reports to contain confidential business information. CIR filed an administrative appeal and filed suit a month later. By the time the court ruled, the disputed records focused on Labor's decision to withhold 10 EEO-1 reports. Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore explained initially that "there is no salary information, sales figures, departmental staffing levels, or other identifying information in these reports. Rather, the diversity reports merely disclose the workforce composition to ensure compliance with Executive Order 11,246 which prohibits discrimination by federal contractors." The agency argued that the information was commercial and provided declarations from several submitters to support its claim. Noting that the declarations for various businesses frequently contained nearly verbatim language supporting the commercial nature of the information, Westmore observed that "the EEO-1 form does not ask submitting companies to explain how resources are allocated across a company's 'segments.' Rather, the report is organized by job category, such as 'Professionals,' 'Sales Workers,' 'Operatives,' 'Craft Workers,' 'Laborers and Helpers,' etc. It does not request demographic information by division, department, or 'segment.' The data sought is companywide." Westmore pointed out that other declarations argued that disclosure would allow competitors to lure away skilled workers. Again, Westmore expressed skepticism, noting that she found "the claim that the EEO-1 reports would make it easier for competitors to lure away talent dubious, since the job categories are so general. . .Since there is no breakdown by department, the total number of professionals reported not only includes the company's computer programmers and engineers, but also its lawyers and accountants." Labor also argued that disclosure would make it more difficult for contractors to recruit needed workers. Pointing out that the information contained in the EEO-1 reports was far too general to support such a claim, Westmore observed that "essentially, the Government is asking the Court to find exempt any statistical information pertaining to employees simply because the business is a commercial enterprise. This expansive interpretation has been rejected." Having found that the agency had not shown that the EEO-1 reports contained commercial information, Westmore next considered whether they were confidential. Westmore noted that in Argus Leader, the Supreme Court explained that "uncontested testimony established that the information was not disclosed, nor made 'publicly available in any way,' suggested that it was confidential." She pointed out that here at least one company had published data from its EEO-1 report in its annual report. Unlike her district court colleague, Judge William Allsup, who found that the inclusion of a provision in the 2016 FOIA Improvement Act extending the foreseeable harm test to all exemptions did not undermine Argus Leader, Westmore noted that "the FOIA request in Argus Leader was filed before FIA was enacted, so the foreseeable harm was not applicable. In fact, the Supreme Court did not address the validity of the foreseeable harm standard. Today, FIA codifies the requirement that the agency articulate a foreseeable harm to an interest protected by an exemption that would result from disclosure. Here, the Government does not attempt to make such a showing, and instead relies on Argus Leader as the reason why it need not do so." Westmore also found that the agency had not considered segregability. Sending that issue back to the agency, she pointed out that "the Government is free to look into the feasibility of segregation; however, it had an obligation to segregate and release nonexempt information when the request was made, which it did not do."
Issues: Exemption 4 - Confidential business information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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