Ctr. for Investigative Reporting v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot.

Citation436 F.Supp.3d 90
Decision Date31 December 2019
Docket NumberCivil Action No. 18-2901 (BAH)
Parties CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING, Plaintiff, v. U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Defendants.
CourtU.S. District Court — District of Columbia

Joshua Hart Burday, Merrick Jason Wayne, Matthew Topic, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff.

Brian J. Field, U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

BERYL A. HOWELL, Chief Judge

The plaintiff, Center for Investigative Reporting, a "nonprofit investigative journalism organization," Compl. ¶ 2, ECF No. 1, challenges the response of the defendants—the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its component agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection ("CBP")—to a request submitted pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), 5 U.S.C. § 552, for "[a]ny and all submissions, records, documents, white papers, memoranda and/or alike material related to border fence/border wall contract proposals," Compl., Ex. A, Pl.'s FOIA Request ("FOIA Request"), ECF No. 1-1. The parties have now cross-moved for summary judgment. Defs.' Mot. Summ. J., ECF No. 14; Pl.'s Opp'n Defs.' Mot. & Cross-Mot. Summ. J. ("Pl.'s Cross-Mot."), ECF Nos. 15, 16. For the reasons set forth below, summary judgment is granted to the defendants with respect to the information withheld pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 3, 6, 7(C), and 7(E), which withholdings are no longer challenged by the plaintiff. Both the defendants' motion and the plaintiff's motion, however, are denied, without prejudice, with respect to the withholdings under FOIA Exemptions 4 and 5, which present novel issues about the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, the Supreme Court's recent decision in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2356, 204 L.Ed.2d 742 (2019), and the interrelation between these two recent developments in the law.

I. BACKGROUND

The FOIA request at issue seeks records related to "the first implementation of President Donald Trump's intention to build an updated border wall." Compl. ¶ 9. Specifically, on March 17, 2017, CBP issued two Requests for Proposals ("RFPs") "to design and build prototypes for a new border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border near Chula Vista, California." Compl. ¶ 7; see Decl. of Shari Suzuki, CBP's Chief of the FOIA Appeals, Policy and Litigation Branch ("Suzuki Decl.") ¶ 7, ECF No. 14-3. In response, potential contractors ("bidders" or "submitters") submitted to CBP over 150 proposals, see Suzuki Decl. ¶ 14, which "included potential designs and materials to be used in construction, as well as more basic information about which companies were submitting proposals," Compl. ¶ 8.

The following month, on April 24, 2017, the plaintiff filed a FOIA request for "[a]ny and all submissions, records, documents, white papers, memoranda and/or alike material related to border fence/border wall contract proposals." FOIA Request. After conducting a search, the defendants located 6,762 pages of responsive records in three CBP components. Suzuki Decl. ¶¶ 11, 15. First, CBP's Office of Acquisition ("OA"), which "was responsible for overseeing the requests for proposals that are the subject of [the plaintiff's] request," id. ¶ 13, found 990 pages of responsive records, 946 pages of which were released in full and 44 pages in part, id. The OA responsive records "primarily consist of the successful proposals that were selected for contract award." Id. Next, CBP's Office of Facilities and Asset Management ("OFAM"), which "manages CBP's facilities and tactical infrastructure portfolios including fencing along the Southwest border," id. ¶ 12, found 101 pages of responsive records, 1 page of which was released in full, 1 page of which was released in part, and 99 pages of which were withheld in full, id. The OFAM responsive records are predominantly made up of internal documents relating to the border wall. See id. ¶¶ 12, 28. Lastly, CBP's Office of Information Technology ("OIT"), which, inter alia , managed the email account that "served as the primary point of contact between the public and CBP for matters related to the border wall RFP's that are the subject of [the plaintiff's] request, including the submission of proposals," id. ¶ 14, found 5,671 pages of responsive records, id. Those records largely "consist[ ] of 152 unsuccessful proposals (i.e., the proposals that were not selected by CBP to be awarded a contract)," as well as emailed "questions and responses pertaining to the RFP's." Id. 72 pages of those records were released in full, while 5,489 pages were withheld in full and 110 pages withheld in part. Id. In sum, of the 6,762 pages of responsive records located in these three CBP offices, the defendants released 1,019 pages in full and 155 pages in part, and withheld 5,588 pages in full. Id. ¶ 15.

The defendants rely on FOIA Exemptions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7(C), and 7(E) as the basis for the redactions and withholdings, as set out in the defendants' Vaughn Index, see Suzuki Decl., Ex. A, Vaughn Index, ECF No. 14-3,1 and further explained in two declarations from Sharon Suzuki, the Chief of CBP's FOIA Appeals, Policy and Litigation Branch, see Suzuki Decl.; Suppl. Decl. of Shari Suzuki, CBP's Chief of the FOIA Appeals, Policy and Litigation Branch ("Suppl. Suzuki Decl."), ECF No. 17-1. The plaintiff does not contest the withholdings under Exemptions 3, 6, 7(C), and 7(E), see Pl.'s Cross-Mot. at 1; Pl.'s Reply Supp. Pl.'s Cross-Mot. ("Pl.'s Reply") at 2 n.2, ECF No. 20, which exemptions account for all of the OA withheld records and the bulk of the OIT withheld pages.2

The plaintiff, however, challenges the defendants' decision to redact, pursuant to Exemptions 4 and 5, 110 pages of emails to CBP, found by OIT, asking questions and expressing concerns about the RFPs, see Vaughn Index # 25, and to withhold, pursuant to Exemption 5, 106 pages of internal OFAM and OIT documents relating to the border wall, see id. ## 3, 6–18, 20–21, 23–24, for a total of 216 challenged pages.3

II. LEGAL STANDARD

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, summary judgment shall be granted "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a). "In FOIA cases, summary judgment may be granted on the basis of agency affidavits if they contain reasonable specificity of detail rather than merely conclusory statements, and if they are not called into question by contradictory evidence in the record or by evidence of agency bad faith." Aguiar v. DEA , 865 F.3d 730, 734–35 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Secret Serv. , 726 F.3d 208, 215 (D.C. Cir. 2013) ); see also Students Against Genocide v. Dep't of State , 257 F.3d 828, 833 (D.C. Cir. 2001) ("[A]n agency is entitled to summary judgment if no material facts are in dispute and if it demonstrates ‘that each document that falls within the class requested either has been produced or is wholly exempt from the Act's inspection requirements.’ " (quoting Goland v. CIA , 607 F.2d 339, 352 (D.C. Cir. 1978) )). Most FOIA cases will be resolved on summary judgment. Brayton v. Office of the U.S. Trade Representative , 641 F.3d 521, 527 (D.C. Cir. 2011).

FOIA was enacted "to promote the ‘broad disclosure of Government records’ by generally requiring federal agencies to make their records available to the public on request." DiBacco v. U.S. Army , 795 F.3d 178, 183 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (quoting U.S. Dep't of Justice v. Julian , 486 U.S. 1, 8, 108 S.Ct. 1606, 100 L.Ed.2d 1 (1988) ). To balance the public's interest in governmental transparency and "legitimate governmental and private interests [that] could be harmed by release of certain types of information," Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Dep't of Defense , 913 F.3d 1106, 1108 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (internal quotation mark omitted) (quoting FBI v. Abramson , 456 U.S. 615, 621, 102 S.Ct. 2054, 72 L.Ed.2d 376 (1982) ), FOIA has nine exemptions, set forth in 5 U.S.C. § 552(b), which "are ‘explicitly made exclusive’ and must be ‘narrowly construed,’ " Milner v. Dep't of the Navy , 562 U.S. 562, 565, 131 S.Ct. 1259, 179 L.Ed.2d 268 (2011) (citations omitted) (first quoting EPA v. Mink , 410 U.S. 73, 79, 93 S.Ct. 827, 35 L.Ed.2d 119 (1973) ; and then quoting Abramson , 456 U.S. at 630, 102 S.Ct. 2054 ). "[T]hese limited exemptions do not obscure the basic policy that disclosure, not secrecy, is the dominant objective of the Act." Dep't of the Air Force v. Rose , 425 U.S. 352, 361, 96 S.Ct. 1592, 48 L.Ed.2d 11 (1976).

FOIA authorizes federal courts to "enjoin the agency from withholding agency records and to order the production of any agency records improperly withheld from the complainant." 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B). District courts must "determine de novo whether non-disclosure was permissible." Elec. Privacy Info. Ctr. v. U.S. Dep't of Homeland Sec. , 777 F.3d 518, 522 (D.C. Cir. 2015). "FOIA places the burden ‘on the agency to sustain its action,’ and the agency therefore bears the burden of proving that it has not ‘improperly’ withheld the requested records." Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. U.S. Dep't of Justice , 922 F.3d 480, 487 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (citations omitted) (first quoting 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B) ; and then quoting U.S. Dep't of Justice v. Tax Analysts , 492 U.S. 136, 142 n.3, 109 S.Ct. 2841, 106 L.Ed.2d 112 (1989) ); see also U.S. Dep't of Justice v. Landano , 508 U.S. 165, 171, 113 S.Ct. 2014, 124 L.Ed.2d 84 (1993) (noting that "[t]he Government bears the burden of establishing that the exemption applies"). This burden does not shift even when the requester files a cross-motion for summary judgment because "the Government ‘ultimately [has] the onus of proving that the [documents] are exempt from disclosure,’ " while the "burden upon the requester is merely ‘to establish the...

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