Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-07-05406/USCOURTS-caDC-07-05406-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 895
Nature of Suit: Freedom of Information Act of 1974
Cause of Action: 

---

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 21, 2008 Decided July 11, 2008 

No. 07-5406 

CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBILITY AND ETHICS IN WASHINGTON, 

APPELLEE

v. 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 06cv01912) 

Jonathan F. Cohn, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, 

U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellant. 

With him on the briefs were Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, Acting 

Assistant Attorney General, and Mark B. Stern, Michael S. 

Raab, Mark R. Freeman, and Christopher J. Walker, 

Attorneys. Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S. Attorney, entered an 

appearance. 

Anne L. Weismann argued the cause for appellee. With 

her on the brief was Melanie Sloan. 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 1 of 14
2 

David L. Sobel and Eric N. Lieberman were on the brief 

for amici curiae The Washington Post, et al. in support of 

appellee and urging affirmance. 

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, and TATEL and 

GARLAND, Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

TATEL, Circuit Judge: In this Freedom of Information 

Act case, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in 

Washington (CREW), a nonprofit organization and 

government watchdog, seeks disclosure of Secret Service 

visitor logs revealing whether nine specified individuals 

entered the White House Complex or the Vice President’s 

Residence at any time “from January 1, 2001, to the present.” 

Instead of invoking any FOIA exemption, the government 

moved for summary judgment, arguing that even though the 

Secret Service is an “agency” for FOIA purposes, the 

requested visitor logs do not qualify as “agency records” 

subject to disclosure. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B) (granting 

federal courts jurisdiction to enjoin agencies from improperly 

withholding “agency records”). Disagreeing, the district 

court denied the government’s motion and ordered the Secret 

Service to “process [CREW]’s Freedom of Information Act 

request and produce all responsive records that are not 

exempt from disclosure within 20 days.” Order, CREW v. 

Dep’t of Homeland Sec., No. 06-1912 (D.D.C. Dec. 17, 

2007). On the parties’ joint motion, however, the court 

stayed its order pending the government’s appeal. Although 

neither party has raised the issue, we now dismiss the appeal 

for lack of appellate jurisdiction. See Nat’l Mining Ass’n v. 

Kempthorne, 512 F.3d 702, 706 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (“We have 

an ‘independent obligation to determine whether subjectmatter jurisdiction exists,’ which we must discharge before 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 2 of 14
3 

ruling on the merits.” (quoting Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 

U.S. 500, 514 (2006) (citation omitted))). 

The government claims two bases for appellate 

jurisdiction. First, it invokes 28 U.S.C. § 1291, which 

provides “jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of 

the district courts of the United States.” Here, however, the 

district court’s order is not final; it merely denied the 

government’s motion for summary judgment, and “as a 

general rule, we lack jurisdiction to hear an appeal of a 

district court’s denial of summary judgment, partial or 

otherwise.” Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches v. England, 

454 F.3d 290, 296 (D.C. Cir. 2006). “This rule prevents 

piecemeal litigation and eliminates delays occasioned by 

interlocutory appeals,” McSurely v. McClellan, 697 F.2d 309, 

315 (D.C. Cir. 1982), and we see no reason to depart from it 

here. The government has yet to claim the right to withhold 

the requested records under any of FOIA’s nine exemptions. 

See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) (listing exemptions). Indeed, in its 

motion for summary judgment, the government explained, 

“[e]ven if these types of records were agency records under 

the FOIA, most or all of them would be protected by one or 

more FOIA exemptions, most notably Exemption 5, which 

encompasses the common law discovery privileges,” Mem. of 

P. & A. in Supp. of Def.’s Mot. for Summ. J. 17 n.18 (“Mot. 

for Summ. J.”), including the presidential communications 

privilege, see Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Dep’t of Justice, 365 

F.3d 1108, 1113 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (“Exemption 5 . . . has been 

construed to incorporate the presidential communications 

privilege.”). “Therefore,” the government continued, “should 

the courts somehow conclude that the materials in question 

are ‘agency’ records subject to FOIA, defendants respectfully 

reserve the right to assert any applicable exemption claim(s) 

prior to disclosure, and to litigate further any such exemption 

claims.” Mot. for Summ. J. 17 n.18. That is precisely the 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 3 of 14
4 

situation in which the government now finds itself. Only 

after the district court rules on any claimed exemptions—

either for or against the government—will there be a final 

decision for the government or CREW to appeal. The district 

court’s decision is thus hardly one that “ends the litigation on 

the merits and leaves nothing more for the court to do but 

execute the judgment.” Digital Equip. Corp. v. Desktop 

Direct, Inc., 511 U.S. 863, 867 (1994) (quoting Catlin v. 

United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233 (1945)). 

Second, the government points to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1), 

which allows appeals from “[i]nterlocutory orders of the 

district courts of the United States . . . granting . . . 

injunctions.” But our precedent makes clear that orders like 

the one before us fail to qualify as appealable injunctions 

under section 1292(a)(1). Indeed, Green v. Department of 

Commerce, 618 F.2d 836 (D.C. Cir. 1980), is directly on 

point. There a FOIA requestor sought disclosure of “boycott 

reports”—documents revealing “requests by foreign nations 

for cooperation with boycotts against countries friendly to the 

United States”—that exporting companies had submitted to 

the Department of Commerce. Id. at 837. The district court 

ordered the government to produce the reports to the plaintiff, 

but only after notifying the exporters who had submitted 

them, “so that they could object to specific disclosures that 

might cause them competitive injury.” Id. at 838. Rejecting 

the government’s contention that this order amounted to an 

appealable injunction, we explained that the argument 

“seem[ed] to be based on the erroneous belief that the District 

Court order impliedly require[d] disclosure of documents 

under the FOIA.” Id. at 841. “On the contrary,” we said, “the 

District Court has not yet determined whether to order release 

of any documents sought by appellees. The court has merely 

heard and rejected two of the [agency]’s legal defenses.” Id.

at 839. 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 4 of 14
5 

So too here. As in Green, “there has not yet been any 

requirement—implied or otherwise—of disclosure of 

documents,” id. at 841; the district court has simply heard and 

rejected the Secret Service’s legal defense that its visitor logs 

fail to qualify as “agency records.” Here, as in Green, it is 

entirely possible that the government will never have to turn 

over a single document given that the Secret Service may yet 

be entitled to withhold some or all of the documents under 

one or more of FOIA’s nine exemptions. Indeed, the district 

court made clear that the government “has a ready recourse in 

Exemption 5” should it believe that the visitor records would 

reveal privileged presidential communications. CREW v. 

Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 527 F. Supp. 2d 76, 99 (D.D.C. 

2007). Both Green and this case thus stand in contrast to 

FOIA cases in which we found section 1292(a)(1) jurisdiction 

after a district court had considered and rejected the 

government’s claimed exemptions. See, e.g., Judicial Watch, 

Inc. v. Dep’t of Justice, 432 F.3d 366, 369 (D.C. Cir. 2005) 

(“The trial court unequivocally rejected the Government’s 

legal position regarding the substantive protection afforded by 

the attorney work-product doctrine under Exemption 5 of 

FOIA, and ordered the Government to disclose materials for 

which it claimed exemption.”); Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Dep’t 

of Energy, 412 F.3d 125, 128 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (finding the 

district court’s order appealable under section 1292(a)(1) 

because “it require[d] the disclosure of documents for which 

the agencies claim[ed] no basis for non-disclosure beyond the 

argument already rejected by the district court”); see also

Ferguson v. FBI, 957 F.2d 1059, 1064 (2d Cir. 1992) 

(distinguishing appealable FOIA disclosure orders from those 

in which “the district court ha[d] yet to determine whether the 

[agency] must disclose the relevant information”). 

In Green, we also rejected the government’s argument 

that because the district court’s order directed the agency to 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 5 of 14
6 

contact exporters whose trade secrets could be affected by 

disclosure, the order was “injunctive in nature.” 618 F.3d at 

841. We explained that the order was “not . . . an ‘injunction’ 

for purposes of Section 1292(a)(1)” because “it d[id] not 

affect the rights or behavior of parties outside of the litigation, 

and d[id] not differ from any other time-consuming 

requirement imposed on litigants by courts in the interest of 

obtaining full information.” Id. For similar reasons, the 

district court’s order requiring the Secret Service to process 

CREW’s request within twenty days does not qualify as an 

injunction under section 1292(a)(1). Under the court’s order, 

the Secret Service will have to search for and locate any 

responsive documents and claim any exemptions it believes 

applicable. At that point, the court may agree with the 

agency, allowing it to withhold the requested records, in 

which case the government would have no cause to appeal. 

Or alternatively, “the issues might be sufficiently narrowed to 

permit the parties to reach a settlement.” Id. at 839. In either 

case, appellate review at this stage is premature. 

The collateral order doctrine, of course, provides another 

possible basis for appellate jurisdiction. See Cohen v. 

Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541 (1949). That 

doctrine allows interlocutory review of a “small class” of 

decisions that “conclusively determine the disputed question, 

resolve an important issue completely separate from the 

merits of the action, and [are] effectively unreviewable on 

appeal from a final judgment.” Coopers & Lybrand v. 

Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 468 (1978). The Supreme Court has 

repeatedly emphasized the doctrine’s deliberately “modest 

scope,” rejecting efforts “to expand the ‘small class’ of 

collaterally appealable orders” beyond its “narrow and 

selective . . . membership.” Will v. Hallock, 546 U.S. 345, 

350 (2006); see also Digital Equip. Corp., 511 U.S. at 868 

(“[T]he ‘narrow’ exception should stay that way and never be 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 6 of 14
7 

allowed to swallow the general rule that a party is entitled to a 

single appeal, to be deferred until final judgment has been 

entered.” (citation omitted)). 

Although the government never asserted jurisdiction 

under the collateral order doctrine, it has raised an argument 

on the merits that could bear on the doctrine’s applicability to 

this case. Specifically, the government contends that forcing 

the Secret Service to invoke Exemption 5 is unacceptable 

because “requiring the President or Vice President to consider 

the assertion of privileges over requested documents is an 

injury separate from the disclosure of the documents 

themselves.” Appellants’ Opening Br. 41. After all, as the 

government points out, “[t]he burden of processing the 

records and asserting exemptions would fall squarely on the 

President, the Vice President, and their senior advisors—the 

only people with the information necessary to make the 

requisite privilege determinations.” Id. at 40. Even though 

the government neglected to make this argument in 

jurisdictional terms, we address it here because it speaks both 

to the “important[ce]” of the district court’s decision and to its 

reviewability “on appeal from a final judgment.” Coopers & 

Lybrand, 437 U.S. at 468. 

The government places great weight on Cheney v. United 

States District Court, 542 U.S. 367 (2004), arguing that 

requiring invocation of FOIA Exemption 5 would run counter 

to the Supreme Court’s warning that courts should hesitate 

before requiring the President or Vice President to “bear the 

burden” of “asserting specific claims of privilege and making 

. . . particular objections.” Id. at 388-89. In the context of 

this case, we disagree. 

First of all, the government has yet to claim that any

FOIA exemption applies, and Exemption 5’s presidential 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 7 of 14
8 

communications privilege is but one of several exemptions on 

which the government might rely. By requesting review now, 

the government asks us to assume both that Exemption 5 

provides the only way for the Secret Service to withhold the 

contested visitor records and that the district court will reject 

its application. We see no reason to make either assumption. 

In any event, we find unpersuasive the government’s 

argument that this case implicates the same separation-ofpowers concerns present in Cheney. There, two nonprofit 

organizations, Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, filed civil 

suits, not FOIA requests, directly against various government 

officials—including Vice President Cheney himself—alleging 

that the National Energy Policy Development Group 

(NEPDG) was subject to the Federal Advisory Committee 

Act’s disclosure requirements. Id. at 373-74. The district 

court had allowed discovery to proceed against the Vice 

President in order to establish exactly who attended NEPDG 

meetings, and the Vice President sought a writ of mandamus 

from this court to vacate the discovery orders. See In re 

Cheney, 334 F.3d 1096, 1100-01 (D.C. Cir. 2003). After 

emphasizing the need for the district court to “narrow 

discovery to ensure that plaintiffs obtain no more than they 

need to prove their case,” id. at 1106, we rejected the Vice 

President’s request for mandamus, explaining that he could 

object to individual discovery requests on executive privilege 

grounds if need be, id. at 1107. The Supreme Court reversed, 

explaining that “separation-of-powers considerations should 

inform a court of appeals’ evaluation of a mandamus petition 

involving the President or the Vice President.” Cheney, 542 

U.S. at 382. Seizing on the Court’s statement that “special 

considerations control when the Executive Branch’s interests 

in maintaining the autonomy of its office and safeguarding 

the confidentiality of its communications are implicated,” id.

at 385, the government argues that requiring the Secret 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 8 of 14
9 

Service to review FOIA requests for its visitor logs is 

tantamount to the discovery request at issue in Cheney. 

Cheney is distinguishable from this case on several 

grounds. To begin with, the discovery request in Cheney was 

directed at the Vice President himself. Indeed, the Court 

explained that “[w]ere the Vice President not a party in the 

case, the argument that the Court of Appeals should have 

entertained an action in mandamus . . . might present different 

considerations.” Id. at 381. The Court also observed, “[t]his 

is not a routine discovery dispute. The discovery requests are 

directed to the Vice President and other senior Government 

officials who served on the NEPDG to give advice and make 

recommendations to the President.” Id. at 385. Here, CREW 

seeks documents not from the President or Vice President, but 

rather from the Secret Service, a FOIA agency well 

accustomed to dealing with such requests. Indeed, the agency 

processed this FOIA request in accordance with its routine 

procedures. See Lyerly Decl. ¶¶ 2-9, 11-28 (May 24, 2007) 

(explaining how the Secret Service initially processed 

CREW’s request and asserting several FOIA exemptions over 

certain responsive documents); see also 6 C.F.R. § 5.4 

(establishing procedures by which components within the 

Department of Homeland Security process FOIA requests). 

According to the Secret Service’s FOIA officer, “the 

individuals who performed the searches 

 . . . conduct FOIA searches as part of their regular 

responsibilities.” Lyerly Decl. ¶ 8. True, the agency would 

need to consult with the White House before claiming 

Exemption 5 on executive privilege grounds, but, as The 

Washington Post et al. point out in their amicus brief, “[t]here 

is, in fact, nothing extraordinary about such a procedure.” 

Amicus Br. 12. The Justice Department issued a 

memorandum in 1993 explaining that “[i]n processing FOIA 

requests, agencies searching for responsive records 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 9 of 14
10 

occasionally find White House-originated records (or records 

containing White House-originated information) that are 

located in their files.” U.S. Dep’t of Justice, FOIA Update: 

FOIA Memo on White House Records, Vol. XIV, No. 3 

(1993), available at http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/foia_ 

updates/Vol_XIV_3/page4.htm. When that happens, agencies 

are instructed to forward the records “to the Office of the 

Counsel to the President for any recommendation or comment 

it may wish to make, including any assertion of privilege, 

prior to [the agency’s] response to the FOIA requester.” Id. 

Indeed, the government concedes that the Secret Service 

followed a similar practice with regard to previous visitor log 

requests, explaining that in “two cases . . . [visitor] records 

were released only after obtaining approval from the White 

House.” Appellants’ Reply Br. 12 n.3; see also 3d Morrissey 

Decl. ¶ 23 (explaining that in three previous cases the Secret 

Service released visitor records “after the Office of the 

President and the Office of the Vice President, in the exercise 

of discretion, expressly authorized the[] releases”). 

Moreover, a profound difference exists between 

subpoenas and discovery requests in civil or criminal cases 

against the President or Vice President and routine FOIA 

cases involving records that may or may not touch on 

presidential or vice presidential activities. Driving the 

Cheney Court was a concern that forcing the Vice President to 

assert executive privilege in the context of broad discovery 

requests submitted during civil litigation would set “coequal 

branches of the Government . . . on a collision course.” 

Cheney, 542 U.S. at 389. In the civil discovery context, if the 

President or Vice President refuses to submit to a court’s 

discovery order, the court’s ultimate sanction is a contempt 

finding against the President or Vice President. In the FOIA 

context, however, no such danger exists. If the Secret Service 

claims authority to withhold the requested records under 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 10 of 14
11 

Exemption 5, and if a court ultimately finds that exemption 

inapplicable, the agency would simply have to disclose the 

documents. If the agency refused to do so, it—not the 

President or Vice President—would “face[] the sanction of 

contempt.” Edmonds v. FBI, 417 F.3d 1319, 1323 (D.C. Cir. 

2005) (explaining that if an agency refuses to disclose 

documents as required by a court order, the agency can be 

held in contempt). Furthermore, unlike civil discovery, which 

the Court noted lacks “checks” sufficient “to discourage the 

filing of meritless claims against the Executive Branch,” 

Cheney, 542 U.S. at 386, FOIA provides a carefully 

structured process for dealing with requests for agency 

documents that might reveal too much about presidential 

communications. The government has offered no convincing 

reason to depart from Congress’s statutory design here. 

Cheney is also distinguishable because CREW’s FOIA 

request has little in common with the broad discovery order at 

issue there. In Cheney, the Court contrasted the disputed 

discovery requests before it with the acceptable subpoena 

orders at issue in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), 

which had “‘precisely identified’ and ‘specific[ally] . . . 

enumerated’ the relevant materials.” Cheney, 542 U.S. at 387 

(quoting Nixon, 418 U.S. at 688 & n.5) (alteration in 

original). The Cheney discovery request, by contrast, 

“ask[ed] for everything under the sky.” Id. Given the broad 

scope of those discovery requests, the Court concluded that 

the Executive Branch should not have to “bear the burden of 

invoking executive privilege with sufficient specificity and of 

making particularized objections.” Id. at 388 (internal 

quotation marks omitted). 

CREW has not made a massive, wide-ranging, “overly 

broad discovery request[],” id. at 386, that would require the 

President, Vice President, or their staff to sort through 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 11 of 14
12 

mountains of files for responsive documents while “critiquing 

the unacceptable discovery requests line by line,” id. at 388. 

Rather, CREW’s request “‘precisely identified’ and 

‘specific[ally] . . . enumerated’ the relevant materials,” 

Cheney, 542 U.S. at 387 (quoting Nixon, 418 U.S. at 688 & 

n.5) (alteration in original), focusing on very specific records 

all containing the same basic information: names, dates, and 

other visitor data. Critically for our purposes, moreover, this 

particular FOIA request is narrowly drawn, targeting nine 

specific individuals. Accordingly, the burden on the White 

House or Office of the Vice President to decide whether to 

claim Exemption 5 over any responsive records should prove 

minimal, especially if, as appears likely from the 

government’s current litigation posture, the White House 

issues a blanket claim of privilege over all responsive Secret 

Service visitor records. 

Finally, although Cheney makes clear that courts should 

“explore other avenues, short of forcing the Executive to 

invoke privilege, when they are asked to enforce against the 

Executive Branch unnecessarily broad subpoenas,” id. at 390, 

nothing in the opinion suggests that routine FOIA requests to 

executive agencies ought to ring the same alarm bells. 

Taking the government’s argument to its logical conclusion 

would mean that the President should never have to assert 

executive privilege in the Exemption 5 context because doing 

so is simply too burdensome. But that can’t be right—indeed, 

the President has routinely invoked Exemption 5 in other 

FOIA cases. For example, when the Democratic National 

Committee recently filed a FOIA request with the Justice 

Department seeking White House emails regarding the firings 

of several United States Attorneys, the government 

successfully argued to the district court that Exemption 5’s 

presidential communications privilege protected the emails 

from disclosure. See Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. Dep’t of 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 12 of 14
13 

Justice, 539 F. Supp. 2d 363, 365-68 (D.D.C. 2008). 

Similarly, when a FOIA plaintiff sought documents from the 

Defense Department “regarding procedures for the 

forwarding of military death penalty cases to the President,” 

the government successfully withheld those records based on 

Exemption 5. Loving v. Dep’t of Defense, 496 F. Supp. 2d 

101, 104, 106-09 (D.D.C. 2007); see also, e.g., N.Y. Times 

Co. v. Dep’t of Defense, 499 F. Supp. 2d 501, 516 (S.D.N.Y. 

2007) (finding comments sent from a White House Counsel’s 

Office attorney regarding the President’s radio address 

protected from disclosure by Exemption 5); Berman v. CIA, 

378 F. Supp. 2d 1209, 1218-22 (E.D. Cal. 2005) (finding 

daily briefings from President Lyndon Johnson’s term of 

office protected by Exemption 5). As these examples well 

demonstrate, invocation of the presidential communications 

privilege in FOIA cases is a routine occurrence, not a 

uniquely intrusive burden. 

Having found no jurisdictional basis under which we can 

proceed, we conclude with the language with which we 

closed in Green: 

In a[] FOIA case a “final decision” is an order 

by the District Court requiring release of 

documents by the Government to the plaintiff, 

or an order denying the plaintiff’s right to such 

release. The case at bar does not present an 

appealable “final order,” but rather an 

interlocutory order issued in the course of a 

continuing proceeding. By dismissing this 

appeal we will enable the District Court to 

complete its work without further interruption. 

Perhaps the result of the District Court 

proceeding will make an appeal from final 

judgment unnecessary; perhaps it will sharpen 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 13 of 14
14 

and narrow the legal issues that must 

eventually be decided by an appellate court. 

The parties may regret that they cannot now 

obtain a ruling on the merits after they have 

prepared for this appeal, but we believe that in 

the long run close adherence to the final 

judgment rule is better calculated to produce 

considered and expeditious justice. 

Green, 618 F.2d at 841-42. Because we find this reasoning 

directly applicable here, we dismiss the government’s appeal 

for lack of jurisdiction. 

So ordered. 

USCA Case #07-5406 Document #1127032 Filed: 07/11/2008 Page 14 of 14