Source: https://thirdcircuit.lexroll.com/abdelfattah-v-u-s-dept-488-f-3d-178-3rd-cir-2007/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 18:14:01+00:00

Document:
Osama ABDELFATTAH v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; Michael Chertoff, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; Magda S. Oriz, Director of FOIA/PA Branch; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Federal Bureau of Investigation. Osama Abdelfattah v. U.S. Department Of Homeland Security. Osama Abdelfattah v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service; U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement; Federal Bureau of Investigation. Osama Abdelfattah v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection; U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement Osama Abdelfattah, Appellant.
No. 06-4106.United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) March 27, 2007.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr., J.
Osama Abdelfattah, Appellant, Pro Se.
James B. Clark, III, Office of United States Attorney, Newark, NJ, Attorney for Appellees.
Before: SCIPJCA, Chief Judge, FUENTES and SMITH, Circuit Judges.
In an effort to obtain records pertaining to himself, Abdelfattah submitted FOIA/PA requests to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“CIS”), the Bureau of United States Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), the Bureau of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”). The CIS conducted a search using Abdelfattah’s name and located 420 pages of responsive documents. Ultimately, the CIS referred 57 pages to the ICE, released 344 pages in full, released one page with redactions, and withheld 18 pages in full. Of the 57 pages referred to the ICE, 51 were released in full, four were with-held in part, and two were withheld in their entirety. When Abdelfattah filed his complaint against the ICE, that agency had not yet responded to the request submitted directly to it. In response to Abdelfattah’s request to the CBP, two pages were determined to be non-responsive and one document was released with certain redactions. The FBI informed Abdelfattah that a search of its automated indices yielded no responsive records at its head-quarters.
Beginning in October 2005, Abdelfattah filed a series of complaints in the District Court alleging that his FOIA requests were not timely processed, that the searches were inadequate, and that certain information in the responsive documents was improperly withheld. These actions were eventually consolidated and the parties filed cross motions for summary judgment. The District Court granted the defendants’ motion. Abdelfattah appeals.
We employ a two-tiered test in reviewing an order of a District Court granting summary judgment in proceedings seeking disclosure under the FOIA. We must “first decide whether the district court had an adequate factual basis for its determination.” McDonnell v. United States, 4 F.3d 1227, 1242 (3d Cir.1993) (citations omitted). If it did, we “must then decide whether that determination was clearly erroneous.” Id. (citations omitted). Under this standard, we will reverse only “if the findings are unsupported by substantial evidence, lack adequate evidentiary support in the record, are against the clear weight of the evidence or where the district court has misapprehended the weight of the evidence.” Id. (quoting Lame v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 767 F.2d 66, 70 (3d Cir.1985)).
On appeal, Abdelfattah challenges the adequacy of the searches and the sufficiency of the justifications for withholding material pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 5 and 7. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5) (b)(7). He also challenges the degree of compliance with the FOIA’s requirement that “[a]ny reasonably segregable portion of a record shall be provided . . . after deletion of the portions which are exempt. . . .”5 U.S.C. § 552(b).
Under the FOIA, an agency has a duty to conduct a reasonable search for responsive records. See Oglesby v. U.S. Department of Army, 920 F.2d 57, 68 (D.C. Cir.1990). The relevant inquiry is not “whether there might exist any other documents possibly responsive to the request, but rather whether the search for those documents wa adequate.” Weisberg v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 745 F.2d 1476, 1485 (D.C. Cir.1984). To demonstrate the adequacy of its search, the agency should provide a “reasonably detailed affidavit, setting forth the search terms and the type of search performed, and averring that all files likely to contain responsive materials . . . were searched.” Valencia-Lucena v. U.S. Coast Guard, 180 F.3d 321, 326 (D.C. Cir.1999) (quoting Oglesby, 920 F.2d at 68).
submitted a FOIA/PA request to the FBI. The FBI informed him that a search of its automated indices to its central records system files at its headquarters located no responsive records. After exhausting his administrative remedies, Abdelfattah filed a complaint challenging the adequacy of the FBI’s search, asserting that records must exist because he had been interviewed by FBI agents in July 2004. The FBI did not submit an affidavit describing its search. Se Valencia-Lucena, 180 F.3d at 326 (describing information necessary to demonstrate adequacy of search). The District Court thus had no factual basis for its determination that the “FBI has satisfied its FOIA obligations to Plaintiff.”See McDonnell, 4 F.3d at 1242. Accordingly, we will remand for further proceedings on this issue. Oglesby v. U.S. Dep’t of Army, 79 F.3d 1172, 1185-87 (D.C. Cir.1996) (remanding where agencies failed to justify the adequacy of their searches).
Abdelfattah further contends the declarations and Vaughn index submitted by the defendants in support of their motion for summary judgment were inadequate. Specifically, he claims that those submissions (1) failed to adequately justify the ICE’s withholding of a draft incident report pursuant to Exemption 5; (2) did not demonstrate that records located by the CIS and the CBP met the threshold for Exemption 7 that was established by this Court in Davin and (3) omitted any indication that the CIS had disclosed all reasonably segregable information.
(1975) (holding that “if an agency chooses expressly to adopt or incorporate by reference an intra-agency memorandum previously covered by Exemption 5 in what would otherwise be a final opinion, that memorandum may be withheld only on the ground that it falls within the coverage of some exemption other than Exemption 5.”).
Abdelfattah also contends the CIS failed to sufficiently justify its use of Exemption 7. Under the present version of Exemption 7, which was enacted in 1986, agencies may withhold “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes” to the extent that disclosure threatens (to varying degrees of certainty) one of six enumerated harms. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7). With respect to the first part of this analysis — whether the record or information was compiled for law enforcement purposes — this Court has stated that a criminal law enforcement agency must first “identify a particular individual or incident as the object of the investigation and specify the connection of the individual or incident to a potential violation of law or security risk.” Then the agency must “demonstrate that this relationship is based upon information sufficient to support at least a `colorable claim’ of its rationality.” Davin, 60 F.3d at 1056 (internal quotation omitted).
(D.C. Cir.1982). Davin, 60 F.3d at 1056. Whe Pratt was decided in 1982, Exemption 7 protected “investigatory record[s] compiled for law enforcement purposes.” But amendments to the FOIA in 1986 modified the Exemption 7 threshold requirement by deleting the word “investigatory” and inserting the words “or information,” so that protection is now available to all “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes.” Thus, while the 1986 FOIA amendments did not affect that portion of th Pratt test which requires a “nexus” between the agency activity giving rise to the records and its law enforcement duties, see Davin, 60 F.3d at 1055, the amendments did broaden the sweep of the exemption’s coverage. See Tax Analysts v. IRS, 294 F.3d 71, 79 (D.C. Cir.2002) (explaining that 1986 FOIA amendments permitted wider application of Exemption 7 by deleting “any requirement” that information be investigatory); see also Keys v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 830 F.2d 337, 340 (D.C. Cir.1987).
Importantly, however, we interpret as dicta that portion of th Davin test which refers to the identification of a particular individual or incident as the object of an investigation into a potential violation of law or security risk. In Davin, the requester sought from the FBI records pertaining to a national union for the unemployed and its one-time leader. With respect to Exemption 7, th Davin Court was concerned primarily with whether it should adopt a per se rule “under which all records compiled by law enforcement agencies . . . qualify as `records compiled for law enforcement purposes'” or whether it should require the agency to establish a rational nexus between the activities giving rise to the requested records and its law enforcement duties. Davin, 60 F.3d at 1054-56. Adoption of a per se rule in Davin would have resulted in a conclusion that the records requested from the FBI, which is a law enforcement agency, fell within Exemption 7’s threshold. Instead, however, the Davin Court chose to apply the rational nexus test, thereby requiring the FBI to articulate a connection between the responsive documents and a legitimate law enforcement concern. Id. at 1056-57. Therefore, rejection of the per se rule and application of the rational nexus test dictated the result in Davin. By contrast, the Davin Court was not presented with the question whether the proper invocation of Exemption 7 depended on the presence of an investigation because it was clear that an investigation had given rise to the responsive documents See Davin, 60 F.3d at 1056. Accordingly, because the investigation requirement of the Davin test “could have been deleted without seriously impairing the analytical foundations of the holding,” the requirement is dicta. In re McDonald, 205 F.3d 606, 612 (3rd Cir.2000) (quotin Sarnoff v. American Home Prods. Corp., 798 F.2d 1075, 1084 (7th Cir.1986)); Cf. United States v. Luiz, 102 F.3d 466, 469 (11th Cir.1996) (holding that first requirement of three-part test was dicta because, under the facts of the case announcing the test, the first requirement had been met). While “[i]t is the tradition of this court that the holding of a panel in a precedential opinion is binding on subsequent panels,” Internal Operating Procedure 9.1, it is also well established that we are not bound by dictum in an earlier opinion. See Mariana v. Fisher, 338 F.3d 189, 201 (3d Cir.2003).
(internal quotation marks omitted); North v. Walsh, 881 F.2d 1088, 1098 n. 14 (D.C. Cir.1989) (stating that “Congress also changed the threshold requirement for withholding information under exemption 7: the exemption formerly covered `investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes’; it now applies more broadly to `records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes.'”). Our research has not disclosed any contrary appellate decisions.
We emphasize, however, that Exemption 7 still requires an agency to demonstrate that the relationship between its authority to enforce a statute or regulation and the activity giving rise to the requested documents is based upon information sufficient to support at least a colorable claim of the relationship’s rationality. See Davin, 60 F.3d at 1056. “[S]imple recitation of statutes, orders and public laws is an insufficient showing of a rational nexus to a legitimate law enforcement concern.” Id. In this case, the CIS has not identified any connection between its law enforcement authority and the information contained in the withheld material. Indeed, in describing the “Reason for Withholding,” the CIS’s Vaughn index merely notes that the documents were “compiled for law enforcement purposes” without providing any further detail or explanation. While the descriptions of some of the withheld documents arguably suggest that they were compiled for law enforcement purposes, we will not extrapolate such a purpose solely based on those brief summaries or on the CIS’s description of the databases that it searched. See Church of Scientology of California v. U.S. Dep’t of Army, 611 F.2d 738, 749 (9th Cir.1979) (remanding where agency provided insufficient evidence to justify use of Exemption 7).
and no indication of “what proportion of the information in a document is non-exempt and how that material is dispersed throughout the. document.” Mead Data Central, 566 F.2d at 261. The absence of this information necessitates a remand to the District Court to make a specific segregability finding with respect to the CIS. See Kimberlin v. Dep’t of Justice, 139 F.3d 944, 950 (D.C. Cir.1998) (remanding because District Court did not make findings regarding segregability).
For the foregoing reasons we will affirm in part, vacate in part, and remand the matter to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. In particular, we will vacate that portion of the District Court’s order which granted summary judgment concerning the FBI’s search for responsive documents, the applicability of Exemption 7 to records with-held by the CIS, and the CIS’s satisfaction of its obligation to demonstrate that all reasonably segregable information has been disclosed. In all other respects, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.
 The District Court did, however, deny that portion of the defendants’ motion for summary judgment which requested that the proceedings be stayed pursuant to Open America v. Watergate Special Prosecution Force, 547 F.2d 605 (D.C. Cir.1976), to permit the ICE to complete its processing of Abdelfattah’s pending FOIA request. The District Court concluded that the ICE’s backlog of pending requests did not amount to “exceptional circumstances,” and ordered the ICE to respond to the FOIA/PA request within 20 days. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(C)(i)-(iii) (permitting a stay if it can be shown that “exceptional circumstances exist and that the agency is exercising due diligence in responding to the request. “). The ICE has complied with this order, and there is no indication that Abdelfattah challenged the response.
 To the extent that Abdelfattah contends that the FBI is withholding six documents that were referred to it by the CIS, the District Court correctly concluded that no such referral was made.
(D.C. Cir.1994) (quoting Delaney, Migdail Young, Chartered v. IRS, 826 F.2d 124, 128(D.C. Cir.1987)).
 Because the CBP has indicated that the page from which it redacted material is “substantially similar” to a page withheld by the CIS, we will not separately examine the CBP’s response to Abdelfattah’s FOIA/PA request.
 The Pratt test asks (1) whether the agency’s investigatory activities that give rise to the documents sought are related to the enforcement of federal laws or to the maintenance of national security; and (2) whether the nexus between the investigation and one of the agency’s law enforcement duties is based on information sufficient to support at least a colorable claim of rationality Pratt, 673 F.2d at 420-21.

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