Source: https://www.rcfp.org/garland/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 19:06:32+00:00

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This week President Obama nominated Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the D.C. Circuit to fill the Supreme Court seat held by Antonin Scalia. Following our long tradition when high court nominees are named, the Reporters Committee looked into Judge Garland’s decisions in First Amendment and Freedom of Information Act cases during his 17-year tenure on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. We do not grade the nominees or make a recommendation for or against their approval by the Senate; we only try to summarize their records to offer perspective.
During his long service on the appellate court, Judge Garland took strong stands in two significant dissents in support of a robust reporter’s privilege and a First Amendment defense to publishing lawfully obtained information. His decisions in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases did not always favor openness, but generally show a commitment to government accountability. Decisions in other areas do not reveal strong positions on media law issues.
Though Judge Garland was a judge on the D.C. Circuit when the contempt case of New York Times reporter Judith Miller was on appeal, the docket and the decision denying en banc review note that he “did not participate” in the review decision, without further elaboration.
In a Privacy Act suit brought by Wen Ho Lee, an atomic scientist who had been accused by the FBI of giving nuclear secrets to China, journalists for several news organizations had been held in contempt for refusing to disclose the names of any individuals within the FBI who may have provided them with information about the investigation. The district court judge found that the identities of possible sources went to the heart of the matter in question, and alternative sources of the information had been exhausted.
The contempt citations were upheld by a three-judge appellate panel. When the entire court subsequently declined to rehear the appeal, Judge Garland separately dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc. He also joined the dissent of his colleague, Judge David Tatel, who wrote that the most important element of the balancing test in determining whether to apply the reporter’s privilege in a civil suit was “weighing the public interest in protecting the reporter’s sources against the private interest in compelling disclosure,” which was established in the circuit’s precedent in 1981.
The significance of the court’s decision in this case should not be underestimated. In many cases involving leaks of government information concerning identifiable individuals, those individuals will have viable claims under the Privacy Act. Moreover, the Act is not limited to private individuals. It is equally available to public officials — and to former public officials — whether they have been accused of corruption or merely of incompetence. It would, for example, be available to former officials seeking to learn who leaked the information that forced them to resign in their administration’s own Watergate.
Barring an unexpected confession by the leaker, in most such cases the subject of the leak will be able to satisfy the centrality and exhaustion requirements cited in the court’s opinion. Thus, if the reporter’s privilege is limited to those requirements, it is effectively no privilege at all. Plaintiffs wielding Privacy Act suits will routinely succeed in putting reporters who receive whistleblower leaks to the choice of testifying or going to jail. And bridled by nothing other than plaintiffs’ private interests, the more such strategies succeed, the more they will be employed. Indeed, where former officials have themselves been indicted, they may find that issuing third-party subpoenas to reporters in Privacy Act suits usefully supplements criminal discovery.
All of this is inconsistent with the commitment we made in Zerilli, where we promised that, “when striking the balance between the civil litigant’s interest in compelled disclosure and the public interest in protecting a newspaper’s confidential sources, we will be mindful of the preferred position of the First Amendment and the importance of a vigorous press.” Zerilli v. Smith, 656 F.2d 705, 712 (D.C.Cir.1981) . . . .
The only way to render the reporter’s privilege effective in the face of Privacy Act claims is to include the requirement . . . that the court “weigh[ ] the public interest in protecting the reporter’s sources against the private interest in compelling disclosure,” Zerilli, 656 F.2d at 712.
Judge Garland joined a dissent written by Judge David Sentelle, finding that someone who lawfully obtained a recording could not be punished for publishing it, even if they should have known that the recording was unlawfully made.
The case involved a 1996 recording of a cell phone conversation between members of the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives in which they discussed how to handle alleged ethical violations of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, including information about “whether Gingrich had violated his settlement agreement with the Ethics Committee.” The tape was given to Rep. James McDermott, who played it for New York Times reporter Adam Clymer and allowed him to record it. After protracted litigation and appeals over whether McDermott’s actions violated the federal wiretap act, the case ended up before the entire D.C. Circuit. The majority of a closely split court held that McDermott did not have a First Amendment defense, primarily because he violated congressional ethics standards in playing it for a reporter.
In the dissent joined by Judge Garland, Judge Sentelle wrote that “the issue is: ‘Where the punished publisher of information has obtained the information in question in a manner lawful in itself but from a source who has obtained it unlawfully, may the government punish the ensuing publication of that information based on the defect in a chain?’” Judge Sentelle wrote that he would answer that question “in the negative,” and that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), which was decided after the first appeal in this case, made clear that such action should not be punished.
The Glomar doctrine is in large measure a judicial construct, an interpretation of FOIA exemptions that flows from their purpose rather than their express language. In this case, the CIA asked the courts to stretch that doctrine too far — to give their imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible. “There comes a point where … Court[s] should not be ignorant as judges of what [they] know as men” and women. Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 52, 69 S.Ct. 1347, 93 L.Ed. 1801 (1949) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). We are at that point with respect to the question of whether the CIA has any documents regarding the subject of drone strikes.
The ACLU filed a FOIA request with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Executive Office for United States Attorneys seeking disclosure of (1) the case name, docket number, and court of all criminal prosecutions in which a person was tracked using cell phone location data, where the government did not first secure a warrant based on probable cause for such data; and (2) policies and procedures followed to obtain cell phone location information for law enforcement purposes. After the ACLU filed suit against the DOJ to compel production of the requested documents, the district court ordered the DOJ to release the requested docket information only in cases that ended in convictions or guilty pleas, but not in cases where the person was acquitted or where the case was dismissed or sealed (and remained under seal).
The D.C. Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Garland, affirmed the district court’s determination that the docket information in cases that ended in convictions or guilty pleas must be released and is not exempt under Exemption 7(C). The court held disclosure of the docket information in cases that ended in convictions or guilty pleas implicated slight privacy interests, but that those weak privacy interests were outweighed by the significant public interest in disclosure, given the considerable public interest in the use of and justification for warrantless cell phone tracking and the considerable information disclosure would provide on the use, details, and efficacy of cell phone tracking.
Judge Garland authored a unanimous opinion for a three-judge panel of court on the application of FOIA’s fee waiver and fee categorization provisions. The lengthy and sweeping opinion made clear that the government failed in its regulations and arguments to take into account the 2007 FOIA amendments and the changing nature of news dissemination in the digital age.
For a requester that serves (or plans to serve) the public through multiple outlets — here, newsletters, press releases, press contacts, a website, and planned reports — those must be considered in combination. An entity with an extensive record will ordinarily qualify with only a thin recital of its plans (or perhaps none at all). Conversely, an entity with little or no historical record of distributing its work (like the National Security Archive) may make up for that absence by concretely setting out its plans to do so.
The court also clarified that the requester’s status as a member of the news media does not turn on the nature of any individual request: a reporter “is a representative of the news media regardless of how much interest there is in the story for which he or she is requesting information.” The overall effect of Judge Garland’s opinion is that new and emerging news entities, as well as those that primarily exist online, will have a much lower burden when seeking recognition as a member of the news media and fee waivers for FOIA requests.
The USDA calendars, by contrast, were not just ‘stored’ in their authors’ offices, but were accessed and updated on a daily basis. Indeed, although not dispositive, the technological changes in the period since Assistant Attorney General Baxter kept his appointments in paper calendars are not without significance. The technologically savvy USDA officials kept their calendars ‘on the FSIS computer system,’ . . . thus necessarily subjecting them to the control of that systems administrators. At a minimum, this suggests that USDA had more ‘control’ over its officials’ calendars than the Justice Department had over Baxter’s.
Judge Garland rejected the argument that just because the calendars also contained personal entries they were not within FOIA’s reach. However, the court did find that the calendar of a sixth less-senior official was not an agency record because it had only been distributed to his secretary.
[O]ne has to ask why — in the age of the Internet — the FBI restricts itself to a dead-tree source with a considerable time lag between death and publication, with limited utility for the FBI’s purpose, and with entries restricted to a small fraction of even the ‘prominent and noteworthy’? Why, in short, doesn’t the FBI just Google the two names? Surely, in the Internet age, a ‘reasonable alternative’ for finding out whether a prominent person is dead is to use Google (or any other search engine) to find a report of that person’s death.
Judge Garland authored the opinion for a unanimous court holding that an order by the district court for expedited processing made the plaintiff a “prevailing party” eligible for an award of costs and attorneys’ fees under the then-prevailing Buckhannon standard.
Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the Secret Service seeking logs of all visitors to the White House in a specified time period. In an opinion authored by Judge Garland, the D.C. Circuit held that logs of visitors to the Office of the President were not “agency records” within the meaning of FOIA but were instead subject to the Presidential Records Act. However, the court held, logs of visitors to other offices in the White House complex that are themselves subject to FOIA, such as OMB, are “agency records,” and must be produced.
In deciding the case, Judge Garland wrote that the outcome of the four-factor test for determining “control” for purposes of determining whether records were the Secret Service’s “agency records” was ambiguous, but that separation of powers concerns tipped the balance in favor of a determination that logs of visitors to the Office of the President were not. Judge Garland emphasized that the court’s decision gave no weight to, and did not rest upon, legal conclusions in a memorandum of understanding between the Secret Service and the White House declaring that the visitor logs are Presidential Records under the exclusive legal custody of the White House.
The D.C. Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Garland, held that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in finding that a FOIA requester was not entitled to attorneys’ fees. Assuming without deciding that the requester was eligible for attorneys’ fees, the court concluded that he was not entitled to such fees under the four-factor test for determining entitlement for fees because: (1) there was little public benefit derived from the case, which resulted in the production of just two documents so heavily redacted that they contributed only “scant” information to the public record; the (2) commercial benefit to the requester and (3) the requester’s interest in the records weighed neither in favor nor against eligibility for fees where the requester had a professional academic interest in the records; and (4) the agency had properly invoked the deliberative process privilege to withhold the vast majority of the requested documents and was only instructed by the district court to determine whether segregation and disclosure of non-privileged factual information was possible.
Judge Garland authored a unanimous opinion holding that technical orders concerning the care, maintenance, or repair of military equipment are exempt from FOIA under Exemption 3 and a federal statute, 10 U.S.C. § 130.
The Air Force initially refused to produce technical orders requested by Newport, a commercial data library, pursuant to Exemption 3 and § 130(a), which provides that the Department of Defense may withhold certain “technical data with military or space application” that cannot be exported without a specific license under the relevant export control statutes. However, the Air Force eventually produced the technical orders to Newport pursuant to Department of Defense Directive 5230.25, which provides that, notwithstanding § 130(a), it is department policy to provide technical data that discloses “critical technology” to “qualified U.S. contractors” for “legitimate business purposes,” as long as the recipient accepts restrictions on its redistribution. Newport nevertheless sought disclosure of the requested technical orders pursuant to FOIA, arguing that the requested technical orders were not “critical technology” and therefore were not governed by Directive 5230.25.
The D.C. Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of Newport’s FOIA claim. The court held that Newport’s FOIA claim was not moot, even though the Air Force had provided the requested technical orders, because Newport’s challenge was to an Air Force policy, namely its practice of denying FOIA requests for data that does not depict “critical technology” and requiring Newport to seek the data under the more restrictive terms of Directive 5230.25. Nevertheless, the court affirmed the grant of summary judgment dismissing Newport’s FOIA claim because it held that § 130(a) is an Exemption 3 statute that covers the FOIA requests that Newport made to the Air Force.
In an action challenging National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regulations governing the disclosure of “early warning reporting” (EWR) data, the D.C. Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Garland, held that 49 U.S.C. § 30166(m)(3)(B) of the TREAD Act does not meet the threshold criteria for a FOIA Exemption 3 statute.
The TREAD Act amended the 1966 Safety Act, which imposed reporting requirements on motor vehicle and motor vehicle equipment manufacturers. The TREAD Act directs the Secretary of Transportation to adopt a regulation expanding the scope of information that manufacturers must submit to NHTSA, including EWR data, which is information that assists the agency in identifying safety defects in motor vehicles or motor vehicle equipment.
Section 30167(b) of the Safety Act requires the Secretary to disclose information obtained under the Safety Act when doing so will assist in carrying out §§ 30117(b) and 30118-21.
Public Citizen brought suit to challenge an NHTSA regulation governing the disclosure of EWR data. The Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) intervened and filed a cross-claim challenging NHTSA’s rejection, in adopting the regulation, of RMA’s suggestion that § 30166(m)(4)(C) is a withholding statute that renders all EWR data protected from disclosure under FOIA Exemption 3 “unless the Secretary determines that the disclosure of such information will assist in carrying out” the specified provisions of the Safety Act.
The D.C. Circuit affirmed the decision of the district court, holding that § 30166(m)(4)(C) does not meet the threshold criteria for a FOIA Exemption 3 statute because it does not specifically exempt EWR data from disclosure. Writing for the court, Judge Garland explained that by its plain language, § 30166(m)(4)(C) does not mean that EWR data may not be disclosed under any circumstances without the specified Secretarial determination. Rather, § 30166(m)(4)(C) provides that EWR data is not subject to disclosure pursuant to § 30167(b) without the specified Secretarial determination. Accordingly, § 30166(m)(4)(C) cannot be a FOIA Exemption 3 statute because it does not specifically exempt certain matters from disclosure.
The FDA requires drug companies to submit investigational new drug applications (INDs) before the company may begin clinical testing of a new drug. INDs describe the drug, the results of laboratory and pre-clinical testing, and the proposed clinical testing.
In considering whether Exemption 4 applies to INDs because their disclosure would cause substantial harm to the competitive position of the drug company, the D.C. Circuit rejected an argument by Public Citizen that under Exemption 4, the court should weigh the competitive harm done to the drug company by the public disclosure of confidential information against “the strong public interest in safeguarding the health of human trial participants.” The court wrote that the central purpose of FOIA is to reveal the workings of the government, and that Public Citizen could not bolster its case for disclosure “by claiming an additional benefit in that, if the information is disclosed, then other drug companies will not conduct risky clinical trials of the drugs that [the company] has abandoned.” The court ultimately concluded that four of the five INDs at issue in this case were exempt from disclosure under Exemption 4.
were not released to the general public; only the Security Council delegates saw them. In fact, the photographs were not “released” at all. Although Ambassador Albright displayed them to the delegates, she retained custody, and none left the U.N. chamber.
The court went on to hold that the agencies’ searches for responsive records were not inadequate, and that other responsive documents were properly withheld under Exemptions 1 and 3.
In a libel suit between business partners and their attorneys over communications leading to a lawsuit over their business, Judge Garland held that the judicial proceedings privilege was broad because it “is intended to facilitate candid discussion, not to obscure it,” and thus allegedly defamatory comments in the communications were privileged.
In a business defamation suit, Judge Garland declined to find that the evidence of common-law malice was sufficient to overcome a self-defense privilege asserted by the libel defendant.
The panel rejected claims both that the statements themselves and “extrinsic evidence” established such malice. Having found that a common-law privilege sustained the dismissal, the panel declined to reach the First Amendment argument on which the defendants had also prevailed below, that the plaintiffs were limited-purpose public figures.
An “infomercial” producer claimed an FTC press release was false and misleading and violated the First Amendment because the falsity was in retaliation for his criticism of the commission. Judge Garland wrote that the plaintiff had failed to state a claim because the release was not false, after finding that determinations of truth or falsity can be determined as matter of law if “no reasonable juror” could find the statements false.
In a libel suit between neighbors over noise complaints, Judge Garland upheld the dismissal of the claim under the self-defense privilege, because the defendants were opposing the plaintiff’s attempts to have them evicted or disciplined by their university. The district court had granted summary judgment on other grounds, having rejected the self-defense argument.
Judge Garland led a three-judge panel that rejected an appeal of a district court order requiring the military to release videotapes of forced extractions of prisoners from their cells at Guantanamo Bay. Judge Garland wrote that the appellate court lacked jurisdiction to hear the appeal; the panel did not rule on the merits. Because issues concerning redactions to the videos were still before the district court, Judge Garland concluded that there was no final order to appeal and the finding was not a collateral issue subject to an immediate appeal.
Judge Garland upheld the constitutionality of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which requires registered lobbyists to disclose the identity of organizations that made monetary contributions and actively participated in planning, supervision, or control of lobbying activities. Judge Garland, writing for a three-judge panel, concluded that the act was not improper on its face or as applied to the plaintiff, and was not unconstitutionally vague.
“We agree with NAM that these are substantial First Amendment interests and that requiring disclosure can burden them. . . . But we also note that the [Supreme] Court, recognizing the lesser burdens that disclosure generally imposes on First Amendment interests, has upheld numerous statutes requiring disclosures by those endeavoring to influence the political system,” Judge Garland wrote.
Judge Garland ruled that a Postal Service regulation banning soliciting signatures on petitions, polls, or surveys on Postal Service property was not narrowly tailored to advance any content-neutral goal, did not leave open ample alternative channels of communication, and was not reasonable because of its broad scale.

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