Opinion ID: 505484
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Are the Decisions Agency Records?

Text: 23 The district court never reached the question of whether the requested opinions and orders constituted agency records in the first place. On appeal the Justice Department renews its argument that the district court decisions sought by Tax Analysts are not agency records within the meaning of the FOIA. 24 [T]he Freedom of Information Act, for all its attention to the treatment of 'agency records,' never defines that crucial phrase. McGehee, 697 F.2d at 1106. The legislative history of the FOIA is similarly unilluminating. See id.; Forsham v. Harris, 445 U.S. 169, 182-87, 100 S.Ct. 977, 985-87, 63 L.Ed.2d 293 (1980) (limiting agency records to documents created or retained by an agency). 25 The Supreme Court, however, has necessarily had to probe the meaning of agency record on several occasions. In so doing, it has emphasized agency possession as one necessary facet. See Forsham, 445 U.S. at 184-87, 100 S.Ct. at 986-87. See also Kissinger, 445 U.S. at 150-55, 100 S.Ct. at 968-71 (agency possession necessary for withholding of former agency records). There is no doubt here that the Tax Division possesses the requested documents. The Court has made clear, however, that possession alone may not suffice to transform a nonagency document into an agency record. Forsham, 445 U.S. at 185 n. 16, 100 S.Ct. at 987 n. 16 (citing Kissinger, 445 U.S. at 157, 100 S.Ct. at 972). Accordingly, we have declined to hold that documents originating in a FOIA-exempted branch, like Congress or the courts, see 5 U.S.C. Sec. 551(1), become disclosable simply because they eventually find their way into the hands of an agency covered by the Act. McGehee, 697 F.2d at 1107. 26 Rather, we have held that information originating in a FOIA-exempt entity may only become an agency record if the agency's eventual dominion over it includes the discretion to disclose it. Thus, we look for evidence surrounding the creation and transmittal of a document indicating that its creator intended to retain control. If there is none, and the document, though created elsewhere, is presently within the free disposition of the agency with which [it] resides, it may be deemed an agency record. Lykins, 725 F.2d at 1459 (quoting Goland v. CIA, 607 F.2d 339, 347 (D.C.Cir.1978), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 927, 100 S.Ct. 1312, 63 L.Ed.2d 759 (1980)). For example, it has been finally determined that presentence reports, once they are transferred to the Bureau of Prisons, a FOIA agency, and used by that agency in its decisionmaking, are agency records. 17 27 The Justice Department maintains that this control analysis precludes disclosure of tax court decisions because there is no indication that the courts intended to relinquish the inherent supervisory power [they have] over [their] own records. Appellee's Brief at 28. The flaw in this argument is that it confuses control over document content with control over disposition and dissemination of the document itself. It is axiomatic that courts and Congress--and, for that matter, all agencies--retain ultimate control over the content of the records they create. But court orders, decisions and opinions may be used, duplicated and distributed by other agencies for their own purposes without detracting from the court's basic authority to amend or vacate them. 28 Here, the courts retain no control over what happens to the copies of the tax decisions they distribute to the Tax Division. 18 Cf. Goland, 607 F.2d at 348 (documents not agency records where Congress intended to retain control). Indeed, the Tax Division already provides such documents to Tax Analysts once the government decides to prosecute an appeal. See supra note 7. 29 Of course, agency possession and power to disseminate a document are still insufficient by themselves to make it an agency record. See Lindsey v. Bureau of Prisons, 736 F.2d 1462, 1465 (11th Cir.), vacated, 469 U.S. 1082 105 S.Ct. 584, 83 L.Ed.2d 695 (1984). Agencies must use or rely on the document to perform agency business, and integrate it into their files, before it may be deemed an agency record. See Wolfe v. Department of Health and Human Services, 711 F.2d 1077, 1081 (D.C.Cir.1983). The Justice Department admits use and reliance on the requested court decisions, reporting that the opinions and orders may be read and used by some Tax Division employees and attorneys in performing their work as representatives of a party to the litigation, including deciding whether to appeal an adverse decision, deciding litigation positions and strategy and in framing legal arguments. J.A. at 12. Moreover, the opinions and orders are classified and maintained in the official case files of the agency. 19 30 The Eleventh Circuit has conveniently distilled the essence of Supreme Court and D.C.Circuit rulings into four relevant considerations for deciding whether an agency has sufficient control over a document to make it an agency record. They are: 31 the intent of the document's creator to retain or relinquish control over the records; the ability of the agency to use and dispose of the record as it sees fit; the extent to which agency personnel have read or relied upon the document; and the degree to which the document was integrated into the agency's record system or files. 32 Lindsey v. Bureau of Prisons, 736 F.2d at 1465 (citations omitted). Our prior discussion indicates that the court decisions involved in this case readily pass all four parts of the test. But, by requiring that all four factors be present, the test rebuts the slippery slope argument that the FOIA necessarily covers all public reference documents that may be found in agency libraries or offices, such as treatises, dictionaries and weekly news magazines. 20 Thus not everything in an agency library nor even every court decision received by the Department of Justice is by any means an agency record subject to disclosure under the Act. Only those tax decisions requested by Tax Analysts that have been incorporated into Department files, are relied upon by Tax Division attorneys in their work, and remain unencumbered by judicial limitations on dissemination, constitute disclosable agency records.