Hughes v. United States Dep't of Justice

• Decision Date: 07 July 2022
• Docket Number: 19-cv-03278 (APM)
• Parties: ARANDER M. HUGHES, JR., Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

ARANDER M. HUGHES, JR., Plaintiff,
v.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al., Defendants.

No. 19-cv-03278 (APM)

United States District Court, District of Columbia

July 7, 2022

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

AMIT P. MEHTA UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE

I.

Pro se Plaintiff Arander M. Hughes, Jr. (“Plaintiff”) brings this action against Defendants United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the United States of America (collectively, “Defendants”) under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) and the Privacy Act. See 5 U.S.C. § 552; Compl., ECF No. 1 [hereinafter Compl.]. This matter is before the court on Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, ECF No. 36 [hereinafter Defs.' Mot.], and Plaintiff's Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings or, in the alternative, for Summary Judgment, ECF No. 22 [hereinafter Pl.'s Mot.]. For the reasons that follow, both Defendants' and Plaintiff's Motions are granted in part and denied in part.

II.

This case arises from a FOIA request Plaintiff submitted to the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (“EOUSA”), a component of the DOJ, for records regarding himself. Compl. ¶ 8. On March 1, 2019, Plaintiff submitted his full name, nickname, date of birth, and social security number to EOUSA seeking “all documents and electronic media assembled by the United

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States Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina [“USAO-WDNC”] containing the name Arander Matthew Hughes, Jr.” Defs.' Mot., Ex. A, ECF No. 36-3 [hereinafter Griffin Decl.], ¶ 5; Griffin Decl., Attach. 1. After Plaintiff did not receive any documents, Compl. ¶¶ 1112, he filed an appeal with DOJ's Office of Information Policy, which rejected his appeal on the ground that “no adverse determination had been made,” id. ¶ 15. Plaintiff then filed the instant suit on October 21, 2019. Id. at 1.

On December 23, 2019, EOUSA sent Plaintiff records for the first time totaling 220 pages, 67 of which contained redactions. Defs.' Mot., Defs.' Statement of Material Facts Not in Genuine Dispute, ECF No. 36-1 [hereinafter Defs.' Facts], ¶ 8. EOUSA withheld 77 pages in full. Id. Plaintiff then filed a Status Report challenging EOUSA's decision to withhold a draft plea agreement. Id. ¶ 9; Pl.'s Status Report, ECF No. 19, at 1-2. In July 2020, EOUSA re-reviewed the draft plea agreement and released it to Plaintiff. Defs.' Facts ¶ 10; Griffin Decl. ¶ 21; Griffin Decl., Attach. 7. Plaintiff then filed a Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings or, in the alternative, for Summary Judgment. See Pl.'s Mot. EOUSA then made two more supplemental releases of previously withheld records in May and June 2021. Defs.' Facts ¶ 11. Defendants moved for summary judgment on June 24, 2021. See Defs.' Mot.

As part of its search, EOUSA determined that 255 pages of records had to be referred for review by another agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”). Griffin Decl. ¶ 18. The FBI released 35 pages in full and 168 pages in part and withheld 52 pages in full. Defs.' Mot., ECF No. 36-5 [hereinafter Seidel Decl.], ¶ 6.

III.

Summary judgment is warranted “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.

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56(a). A dispute is “genuine” only if a reasonable factfinder could find for the nonmoving party, and a fact is “material” only if it is capable of affecting the outcome of litigation. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). The moving party must support the assertion that no facts are in dispute by “citing to particular parts of materials in the record, including . . . affidavits or declarations,” FED. R. CIV. P. 56(c)(1)(A), and the reviewing court must “view the facts and draw reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the [non-moving] party.” Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 377 (2007) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted).

Most FOIA cases are appropriately resolved on motions for summary judgment. Brayton v. Off. of the U.S. Trade Rep., 641 F.3d 521, 527 (D.C. Cir. 2011). In resolving a FOIA case, a court may award summary judgment by relying on the information included in the agency's affidavits or declarations as long as they are “relatively detailed and nonconclusory.” Goland v. CIA, 607 F.2d 339, 352 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (footnote and internal quotation marks omitted). Summary judgment is warranted if the declarations “describe the documents and the justifications for nondisclosure with reasonably specific detail, demonstrate that the information withheld logically falls within the claimed exemption, and are not controverted by either contrary evidence in the record nor by evidence of agency bad faith.” Mil. Audit Project v. Casey, 656 F.2d 724, 738 (D.C. Cir. 1981). The agency bears the burden of demonstrating that each FOIA exemption applies, and this burden can be satisfied in the form of a Vaughn Index that “permit[s] adequate adversary testing of the agency's claimed right to an exemption.” Nat'l Treasury Emps. Union v. U.S. Customs Serv., 802 F.2d 525, 527 (D.C. Cir. 1986); see Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 828 (D.C. Cir. 1973).

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IV.

The parties' motions present four issues: (1) whether Defendants conducted an adequate search of responsive records; (2) whether Defendants properly treated some records as outside the scope of the FOIA request; (3) whether Defendants properly withheld records under FOIA Exemptions 5, 6, and 7(C);^[1] and (4) whether Plaintiff has “substantially prevailed” such that he is entitled to litigation costs under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(E).

Defendants suggest that Plaintiff's motion must be summarily denied because of procedural deficiencies and that the first and third issues must be treated as conceded because Plaintiff has failed to adequately address or dispute them. See Defs.' Mot., Defs.' Combined Mem. of P. & A. in Supp. of Defs.' Mot. & Opp'n to Pl.'s Mot., ECF No. 36-2 [hereinafter Defs.' Mem.], at 19-21; Defs.' Reply to Pl.'s Opp'n to Mot. for Summ. J., ECF No. 42 [hereinafter Defs.' Reply], at 1-6, 11-12. Out of an abundance of caution, the court declines to take either course. See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106 (1976) (“The handwritten pro se document is to be liberally construed.”); cf. Winston & Strawn, LLP v. McLean, 843 F.3d 503, 509 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (holding that a summary judgment motion cannot be treated as conceded in its entirety). The court will address the adequacy of the search, the records treated as outside the request, the FOIA exemptions, and the litigation costs, in that order.

A.

First, the court finds that Defendants' search was adequate. To prevail on this issue, Defendants must show that they conducted a search reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant records. See Weisberg v. U.S. Dep't of Just., 705 F.2d 1344, 1351 (D.C. Cir. 1983). The affidavits

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and declarations submitted by Defendants must be “reasonably detailed . . ., setting forth the search terms and the type of search performed, and averring that all files likely to contain responsive materials (if such records exist) were searched.” Valencia-Lucena v. U.S. Coast Guard, 180 F.3d 321, 326 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks omitted). The question is not whether other responsive records not yet produced may exist but whether the search itself was adequate. Steinberg v. U.S. Dep't of Just., 23 F.3d 548, 551 (D.C. Cir. 1994). Ultimately, a responding agency need not search every record system but must conduct a good-faith, reasonable search of those systems of records likely to possess the requested information. Oglesby v. U.S. Dep't of Army, 920 F.2d 57, 68 (D.C. Cir. 1990).

Defendants aver that they conducted an adequate search. Defs.' Mem. at 5-7. Because Plaintiff explicitly requested records assembled by USAO-WDNC, EOUSA assigned the search only to USAO-WDNC. Griffin Decl. ¶¶ 5-6. Katharine Madden, the USAO-WDNC employee who oversaw the search, described how she conducted the search, including identifying the relevant case-management system accessed to locate records. Defs.' Mem., Ex. B, ECF No. 36-4 [hereinafter Madden Decl.], ¶¶ 10-13. Madden and other USAO-WDNC employees also searched electronic folders and drives and requested physical...