Opinion ID: 4390304
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rojas’s Application and FOIA Request

Text: In early 2015, Rojas applied for an Air Traffic Control Specialist position with the FAA. During the application process, he completed the 2015 BA. On May 21, 2015, the FAA notified Rojas that he was ineligible for a position based on his responses to the BA. Rojas’s rejection 1 Rojas requests judicial notice of a transcript of a congressional hearing from June 15, 2016. In general, we may take judicial notice of publicly available congressional records, including transcripts of congressional hearings. See Fed. R. Evid. 201(b)(2); Lee v. City of L.A., 250 F.3d 668, 689 (9th Cir. 2001) (providing that judicial notice may be taken of public records). But judicial notice is not appropriate here because the testimony at issue is “not relevant to the resolution of this appeal.” Santa Monica Food Not Bombs v. City of Santa Monica, 450 F.3d 1022, 1025 n.2 (9th Cir. 2006). According to Rojas, the testimony is pertinent to whether the FAA conducted validation studies on the BA. This fact is undisputed on appeal: both parties agree that APTMetrics validated the 2014 and 2015 BA for the FAA. 6 ROJAS V. FAA notification briefly described the BA and stated that the test was “independently validated by outside experts.” On May 24, 2015, Rojas emailed the FAA a FOIA request seeking “information regarding the empirical validation of the biographical assessment noted in [his] rejection notification [from the FAA]. This includes any report created by, given to, or regarding APTMetrics’ evaluation and creation and scoring of the assessment.” On June 18, 2015, the FAA, through the Office of the Chief Counsel, denied Rojas’s FOIA request for documents on the empirical validation of the 2015 BA. The FAA reasoned that these records were, in part, protected as attorney workproduct and therefore subject to Exemption 5 of FOIA. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5). On June 24, 2015, Rojas filed an administrative appeal contesting the FAA’s denial of his FOIA request. On October 7, 2015, the FAA remanded Rojas’s case to the Office of the Chief Counsel because the agency incorrectly searched for documents on the empirical validation of the 2014 BA, instead of the 2015 BA. Pursuant to the remand, attorneys at the Office of the Chief Counsel reviewed records on the empirical validation of the 2015 BA. They located the following three documents: (1) a summary of the Air Traffic Control Specialist hiring process, dated December 2, 2014; (2) a summary of the 2015 BA, dated January 29, 2015; and (3) a summary of the validation process and results of the 2015 BA, dated September 2, 2015. All of these records were created by APTMetrics and are identified in the FAA’s Vaughn Index. 2 The FAA denied Rojas’s FOIA request for 2 Agencies are typically required to submit a Vaughn Index in FOIA litigation. See Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 823–25 (D.C. Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 (1974). A Vaughn Index identifies the ROJAS V. FAA 7 the second time on December 10, 2015, once again invoking Exemption 5 and the attorney work-product doctrine. On July 31, 2015, Rojas filed a complaint in district court, alleging that the FAA withheld information on the empirical validation of the 2015 BA in violation of FOIA. On September 21, 2016, the district court ordered the FAA to disclose the three documents identified in its Vaughn Index for in camera review. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the FAA on November 10, 2016, holding that the three responsive records were properly withheld under Exemption 5 as attorney workproduct. The court also concluded that there was no genuine dispute of material fact that the FAA adequately searched for relevant documents. Rojas timely appeals. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(a).