In today’s post, I am covering a somewhat stale, non-tax holding in American Immigration Lawyers Association v. Executive Office for Immigration Review (“AILA”), a case dealing with a FOIA request “seeking disclosure of records related to complaints about the conduct of immigration judges.” It will also touch on the DOJ response to the case, which was issued in January. Perfect for a tax procedure blog that tries to stay somewhat current. The case, decided by the DC Circuit, is important, however, because the determination of what could be redacted from a record, once it is determined the record was responsive to the FOIA request. Specifically, whether non-responsive aspects of the record could be redacted (spoiler – Sri Srinivasan says “no”). This has far reaching potential consequences with FOIA requests beyond the narrow scope of the request, including to FOIA requests made in relation to tax cases or requests for information about how the Service administers the laws.
The substance of the case does not matter much for this discussion, although it is interesting that such terrible allegations have repeatedly been made against the immigration judges. Various complaints included disrespectful and at times racist treatment of defendants, and sometimes fairly reprehensible treatment of counsel. Unfortunately, this is probably old hat for people who work in this system; makes me somewhat thankful when I do catch a helpful Appeals Officer or Revenue Agent or the quality work usually done by the tax court. In this case, AILA requested all information relating to complaints about the immigration judges. Interestingly, I believe some faulty redacting relating to this case may have resulted in the summary of the complaints being released, along with the judges’ names. I just redacted the heck out of about 1500 pages using Adobe, and now I am a little nervous. I would assume the FOIA folks redact far more frequently than me.
Procedurally, FOIA generally requires the feds to make certain information available to the public, but subject to nine exceptions. See 5 USC § 552(a). The pubic is allowed to request the documents, and the agency must provide them, but has the ability to withhold the documents if the entire document is subject to an exemption, or can redact portions that are properly withheld and provide the rest of the document. The exemptions can be found listed here. For those of you interested in learning all about the intersection of FOIA and tax practice and procedure, Les recently updated chapter 2 of SaltzBook, which covers this in great detail, including all the exemptions and how to use FOIA requests in your practice.
read more... In AILA, what is important is that various documents were found that were responsive to the extensive requests made. Many of those documents contained portions that were responsive to the request, and portions that were responsive but also fit into one of the exemptions. Aspects of some of the documents were also non-responsive. Meaning, portions of the documents did not relate to the request that was made. Agency practice, I believe including the IRS, was to redact all portions of the document that were exempt, and also to redact all the portions of the document that were non-responsive to the request. When in doubt, keep it out. This practice had been somewhat sanctioned by various district courts, and was in question in AILA. The DC Circuit, however, disagreed with the district courts. In discussing the “ostensibly non-responsive material” (you know this isn’t going to go your way when “ostensibly” is applied to your position), the Court noted that the government’s position was that it was not under any obligation to release information concerning matters unrelated to the FOIA request. Not a wholly absurd position. In the Vaughn index, examples were given as to why the portions of the documents were not responsive, such as information relating to the judge needing to clean his/her office, and vacation plans. That is all interesting, but not germane to the request. Although the lower court and other district courts had addressed this issue, it was the first time the DC Circuit had taken the matter up. The Court began by providing some background information, stating FOIA requires “’each agency, upon any request for records which (i) reasonably describes such records and (ii) is made in accordance with published rules stating time, place, fees (if any), and procedures to be followed, shall make the records promptly available to any person.’ 5 USC § 552(a)(3)(A).” Further, in “responsive records” certain portions may be redacted pursuant to the exemptions. The only provisions, however, related to responsive records, and withholding information, is found within those exemptions. The court stated, FOIA creates a process for an agency to follow when responding to a FOIA request: First, identify responsive records; second, identify those responsive records or portions of responsive records that are statutorily exempt from disclosure; and third, if necessary and feasible, redact exempt information from the responsive records. The statute does not provide for…redacting non-exempt information within responsive records. Relying on a handful of SCOTUS cases that required FOIA exemptions to be narrowly construed, the Court did not see how it could authorize the redacting of aspects of records that were found to be responsive. As stated above, the manner in which agencies generally redacted was contrary to this holding. We do not know the exact significance of the holding yet, and the Court somewhat foreshadowed what impact this case may have. The Court stated: The practical significance of FOIA’s command to disclose a responsive record as a unit…depends on how one conceives of a “record.” Here the parties have not addressed the antecedent question of what constitutes a distinct “record” for FOIA purposes…for purposes of this case, we simply take as a given [the government’s] own understanding of what constitutes a responsive “record,” as indicated by its disclosures… Although FOIA includes a definition section…that sections provides no definition of the term “record.” Elsewhere, the statute describes the term record as ‘include[ing] any information that would be an agency record…when maintained by an agency in any format, including an electronic format’…but that description provides little help in understanding what is a “record” in the first place.” In the text of the case, the Court compares the definition of “record” under FOIA to the definition of record under the Privacy Act, which states it is “any item, collection, or grouping of information.” See 44 USC § 2201(2). Although not completely clear, it is more instructive than no definition at all. In AILA, the Court’s holding was clearly not going to sit well with the government, but the Court provided the framework for each agency to rethink how it approached FOIA requests in a manner that mitigated what the agencies viewed as a negative holding. The DOJ somewhat took them up on that offer. In January of 2017, Office of Information Policy released guidance entitled, “Defining a ‘Record’ Under FOIA” addressing the holding in AILA. The guidance notes that after AILA, “it is not permissible to redact information within a record as “non-responsive.” It also highlighted the fact that the Court looked to the “sister statute” of FOIA, The Privacy Act, 5 USC 552a(a)(4) for the potential definition of “record” as “any item, collection, or grouping of information.” From this, the guidance encouraged the agencies to use the Privacy Act definition and use a “more fine-tuned, content-based approach to the decision,” as to what a record is, and determine if an entire document is the record, or just a page, or just a paragraph. In AILA, the Court stated it may be impossible to withhold one sentence of a paragraph, and DOJ agreed. The guidance provided some practical pointers about how an agency must then report the number of records the agency has that is responsive. It should also clearly identify each record and if it contains multiple subjects so “the requester can readily see why and how the agency divided the document into distinct ‘records’.” AILA was a substantial departure from how agencies, including Treasury, and the Service, handled FOIA responses. The case, however, provided a roadmap to mitigate the shift, which the Government apparently will seek to implement. The practical impact may be less overall pages, but with less redaction.
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Stephen Olsen writes, “The practical impact may be less overall pages, but with less redaction.” I initially came to the opposite conclusion because I pictured a 16-page “record” of which only one page was responsive, so 15 pages were not provided. Now, all 16 pages will have to be provided, so there will be more pages (and more fees, for those requestors who must pay by the page). But then I pictured the federal agency delivering either 15 blank pages, or 15 pages blacked out (adding to printer ink costs). If the entire 16 pages are still considered a “record,” the number of pages would remain the same. If the agency determines that the 15 pages are a separate “record,” then there may be fewer pages.
But reading the opinion, what seems to be happening here is not that 16 pages are being redacted to one page. Instead, the agency is redacting information on a single page. For example, the opinion tells us:
==Insofar as the government in a different case might undertake to conceive of an individual “record” more narrowly, we note that, here, the agency’s redactions on grounds of non-responsiveness went down to the level of an individual sentence within a paragraph within an email message. We find it difficult to believe that any reasonable understanding of a “record” would permit withholding an individual sentence within a paragraph within an email on the ground that the sentence alone could be conceived of as a distinct, non-responsive “record.”==
As Norman Mailer testified at the Chicago Eight conspiracy trial, ‘Facts are nothing without their nuance.” The issue in this case seems to be, how many nuances must be provided in response to a FOIA request, and who is entitled to separate those from the facts.
For thosejudges who are racist with disrespectful why not file an ethics complaint with the state bar association. Filing and ethics complaint against federal judge is useless. In the last 10 years 5 judges (out of 9716 complaints) received adverse rulings. Even when the judge renders a decision on a complaint about herself results in no sanctions.