Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-05279/USCOURTS-caDC-14-05279-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Florent Bayala
Appellant
United States Department of Homeland Security
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 18, 2015 Decided June 28, 2016

No. 14-5279

FLORENT BAYALA,

APPELLANT

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY,

OFFICE OF THE GENERAL COUNSEL,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:14-cv-00007)

David Cleveland argued the cause and filed the briefs for 

appellant. 

Kenneth A. Adebonojo, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued 

the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Vincent H. 

Cohen, Jr., Acting U.S. Attorney at the time the brief was 

filed, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before: GRIFFITH, SRINIVASAN, and MILLETT, Circuit 

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge MILLETT.

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MILLETT, Circuit Judge: Florent Bayala filed a Freedom 

of Information Act (“FOIA”) lawsuit when the Department of 

Homeland Security failed to disclose many of the immigration 

documents he had requested and gave no particularized 

explanation for its withholding decision. Shortly after Bayala 

filed suit, however, the Department reversed course and 

spontaneously released a number of previously withheld 

documents, while offering a heavily revamped explanation for 

its remaining withholdings. After it made that voluntary 

release, the Department turned around and argued that 

Bayala’s case should be dismissed because he failed to 

exhaust the administrative appeal process for the 

Department’s original and now-displaced withholding 

decision. The district court agreed and dismissed the case. 

That was incorrect. The only live FOIA decision now under 

review is the one the Department chose to make for the first 

time in litigation, and for which there was no administrative 

avenue to exhaust. We accordingly reverse and remand this 

case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

I

Florent Bayala is a citizen of Burkina Faso. After 

entering the United States in 2012, he applied for asylum and 

was interviewed at the Arlington, Virginia Asylum Office. 

During that interview, the asylum officer took five pages of 

notes and then subsequently wrote a three-page 

“Assessment.” In November 2013, Bayala filed a FOIA 

request with the Department of Homeland Security asking for 

copies of the asylum officer’s notes, the Assessment, and 

“any material used by the officer, but not given to him.” J.A. 

14.

Approximately a month later, the Department responded 

to Bayala’s FOIA request. In a two-page letter, the 

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Department advised Bayala that it had identified 157 pages 

that were responsive to his request. Of those, the Department 

enclosed 119 pages in their entirety and ten pages in part. 

J.A. 26. The Department also withheld eleven pages in full, 

including the notes and the Assessment from Bayala’s asylum 

interview. The Department broadly asserted that all of the 

withheld documents “contain[ed] no reasonably segregable 

portion(s) of non-exempt information.” Id. The Department 

then provided a laundry list of “applicable” exemptions that it 

believed justified its withholding, citing without further 

elaboration 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5) (exempting inter-agency or 

intra-agency memoranda or letters); id. § 552(b)(6)

(exempting individual information in personnel, medical, and 

similar files if disclosure would constitute an unwarranted 

invasion of personal privacy); id. § 552(b)(7)(C) (exempting 

personal information in law enforcement records where 

disclosure could constitute an unwarranted invasion of 

personal privacy); and id. § 552(b)(7)(E) (exempting law 

enforcement records involving techniques and procedures for 

law enforcement investigations or prosecutions). The 

Department did not specify which exemptions applied to 

which portions of which withheld pages or why. 

The Department also referred fourteen pages “in their 

entirety to the State Department for their direct response” to 

Bayala. J.A. 26. The Department further noted that it had 

located “a potentially responsive document(s) that may have 

originated from U.S. Immigration and Customs 

Enforcement,” and had “sent the document(s) and a copy of 

[Bayala’s] FOIA request to the [Immigration and Customs 

Enforcement] FOIA Office for consideration and direct 

response” to Bayala. Id. Lastly, the letter advised Bayala 

how to appeal the Department’s determination 

administratively.

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Bayala did not exhaust that avenue for administrative 

appeal. Instead, he proceeded straight to district court with a 

lawsuit alleging that the Department’s failure to explain its 

reasons for non-disclosure left Bayala unable “to make a 

meaningful administrative appeal,” and that the Department 

had “not provide[d] any reasons or facts for its conclusion that 

nothing is segregable.” J.A. 19, 21. The complaint further 

explained that the Department’s “vague and cryptic” response 

to his FOIA request “thwart[ed]” Bayala’s right to appeal by 

making any appeal “illusory and a waste of time.” Id. at 7. 

The complaint requested that the district court declare that the 

Department’s response violated FOIA and order the 

Department to “re-write” its letter (i) to “describe what 

documents were sent to the State Department, and describe 

what documents were sent to ICE,” (ii) to “give the real 

reasons, and facts, why the notes are exempt, and why 

nothing is segregable, so that plaintiff may make a meaningful 

administrative appeal,” and (iii) to “give the real reasons, and 

facts, why the Assessment is exempt, and why nothing is 

segregable, so that plaintiff may make a meaningful 

administrative appeal.” Id. at 21. Bayala also sought to 

enjoin the Department “from issuing such a letter in the 

future,” as well as an award of attorney’s fees. Id.

Less than three months after Bayala filed suit and before 

the Department had responded to the complaint, the 

Department voluntarily released the asylum officer’s notes 

and a number of other documents it had previously withheld. 

The Department continued, however, to withhold the 

Assessment, offering for the first time in its district court 

papers a new and far more detailed, five-page explanation for 

its withholding decision. The parties filed cross-motions for 

summary judgment. 

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The district court dismissed Bayala’s case for failure to 

exhaust administrative remedies. In so ruling, the court 

rejected Bayala’s argument that the Department’s scant and 

unfocused response to his FOIA request precluded any 

meaningful administrative appeal. The court reasoned that an 

administrative appeal would have provided an opportunity for 

the Department to provide the more detailed reasoning that 

Bayala sought. 

II

The government argues that we lack jurisdiction because 

the entire FOIA appeal is moot. Article III’s limitation of 

federal-court jurisdiction to cases and controversies requires

that “an actual controversy * * * be extant at all stages of 

review, not merely at the time the complaint is filed.” 

Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, 133 S. Ct. 1523, 1528 

(2013) (quotation marks omitted). As such, “[i]f an 

intervening circumstance deprives the plaintiff of a personal 

stake in the outcome of the lawsuit, at any point during 

litigation, the action can no longer proceed and must be 

dismissed as moot.” Id. (quotation marks omitted) (citing 

Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U.S. 472, 477–478 

(1990)).

In the FOIA context, that means that once all the 

documents are released to the requesting party, there no 

longer is any case or controversy. See Perry v. Block, 684 

F.2d 121, 125 (D.C. Cir. 1982) (“[H]owever fitful or delayed 

the release of information under the FOIA may be, once all 

requested records are surrendered, federal courts have no 

further statutory function to perform.”). But where the 

government has released only a portion of the requested 

documents, the case is moot only with regard to those 

documents. See Williams & Connolly v. SEC, 662 F.3d 1240, 

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1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011). While the Department is correct then 

that any dispute over the earlier withholding of the documents 

that the Department has now turned over is moot, the entire 

FOIA case is not moot because Bayala has not received all of 

the documents that he requested. Bayala’s FOIA request

sought, among other things, “a copy of the Assessment to 

Refer of the Asylum Officer.” J.A. 23. As of this date, 

Bayala has not yet received that document and, accordingly, 

there is still a live controversy over whether the Department 

may lawfully withhold that document. 

Of course, in district court, the Department defended its 

decision to omit the Assessment from its more recent tranche 

of disclosures. The Department cited the exemption for 

internal agency memoranda privileged by law from public 

disclosure, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5). It is well-settled that “[a]n 

agency [may] prevail on an exemption that it has * * * raised 

either at the agency level or in the district court, [although not 

an exemption] that it has invoked for the first time in the 

appellate court.” Jordan v. U.S. Department of Justice, 591 

F.2d 753, 779 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (emphasis added). But the 

propriety of that withholding determination has not yet been 

adjudicated and is very much contested, so this FOIA case is 

not moot.

The government nevertheless argues that the case is moot 

because, in Bayala’s opposition to summary judgment, Bayala 

said that he is “not now seeking the release of documents: he 

is challenging the administrative appeal process employed by 

the [Department].” J.A. 135 (emphasis added). That 

overreads Bayala’s submission. His use of “now” indicates 

that Bayala still wants disclosure of the Assessment. Indeed, 

Bayala confirmed at oral argument that he still “very much 

contest[s] that the Assessment is not exempt.” Oral Arg. Tr. 

4; see also id. at 11 (Q: “[T]hey’re still withholding the 

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Assessment and you want that?” A: “Indeed.”); J.A. 7 

(Complaint ¶ 4) (“Plaintiff is desirous of obtaining the 

documents * * *.”); id. at 20 (Complaint ¶ 42) (“There must 

be some parts of the Assessment which are segregable.”); id.

at 21 (seeking in prayer for relief a declaration that the 

Department’s decision “violates the FOIA”). In short, 

because “all requested records are [not] surrendered,” Perry, 

684 F.2d at 125, and Bayala still contests that withholding,

this appeal is not moot.

While the FOIA case itself is not moot, the dispute over 

administrative exhaustion is. To be sure, FOIA “specifically 

provides for an administrative appeal process following an 

agency’s denial of a FOIA request.” Oglesby v. U.S. 

Department of Army, 920 F.2d 57, 61 (D.C. Cir. 1990); see 5 

U.S.C. § 552(a)(6). That requirement, however, is not 

jurisdictional. See Hidalgo v. FBI, 344 F.3d 1256, 1258 (D.C. 

Cir. 2003) (“[T]he exhaustion requirement is not jurisdictional 

because the FOIA does not unequivocally make it so.”); 

Department of Justice, Guide to the Freedom of Information 

Act 96 (2016 ed.) (“[F]ailure to file an administrative appeal 

is not an absolute bar to judicial review.”). Exhaustion, 

instead, can be a substantive ground for rejecting a FOIA 

claim in litigation.

The Department’s argument that exhaustion of its 

original administrative decision was required, however, 

became moot once it chose to abandon its previous 

determination, make a sua sponte disclosure of documents,

and craft a new, five-page-long explanation for this different

withholding decision in the district court, the content and 

specificity of which went far beyond the original, perfunctory 

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administrative decision.1 That new FOIA determination

rendered the propriety of the original agency decision—and 

any administrative challenges to it—an entirely academic 

question. The lawfulness of the initial administrative 

disclosure and explanation for withholding, in other words,

were no longer live controversies. Nor were Bayala’s

arguments about the legal necessity of exhausting what he 

deemed to be a grossly insufficient agency response. 

Accordingly, the district court erred in dismissing the case for 

failing to exhaust. 

Instead, once the government abandoned its original 

FOIA decision, the dispute between the parties centered on 

the correctness of the Department’s materially novel and 

different in-court disclosure decision. There is no required 

administrative exhaustion process for that in-court litigation 

decision. Tellingly, FOIA’s text provides only for 

administratively exhausting an “adverse determination” made 

 1 It bears noting that the Department did not move at the immediate 

outset of this case, before its voluntary disclosure, to dismiss for 

failure to exhaust under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). 

That is the typical course of action because exhaustion is generally 

considered to be an element of a FOIA claim. See, e.g., Hidalgo, 

344 F.3d at 1260 (vacating the summary judgment order of the 

district court and remanding the case with instructions to dismiss 

the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for 

failure to exhaust). Rather, the Department here chose to make a 

new FOIA determination and then push for summary judgment on 

the merits of that new withholding decision—arguing under Federal 

Rule of Civil Procedure 56 that it was “entitled to judgment as a 

matter of law” in the case because it “(1) conducted a reasonable 

search; (2) produced all documents responsive to [Bayala’s] request 

and subject to FOIA; and (3) properly withheld information 

pursuant to valid invocation of FOIA statutory exemptions.” J.A. 

33.

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by the agency within its statutorily required administrative 

process. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i) & (ii). The 

government, for its part, cites no authority—and we can 

conceive of none—for compelling a FOIA claimant to 

administratively exhaust a decision that the agency no longer 

stands by and that has been overtaken by new and different 

in-court disclosures and explanations. Nor can Bayala be 

compelled to administratively exhaust this new agency 

decision because that decision was the byproduct of litigation, 

not of the pre-litigation administrative decision-making

process to which FOIA’s exhaustion requirement textually 

applies. 

* * * 

For those reasons, the question of administrative 

exhaustion is moot. We accordingly reverse and remand to 

the district court for further proceedings consistent with this 

decision. 

So ordered.

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