Opinion ID: 413259
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the use of a time-of-request cut-off date

Text: 15 McGehee's first challenge concerns the CIA's decision to limit its search to records in its possession on the date when his request was finalized. He points out that the agency did not disclose any documents to him until compelled to do so by an order of the District Court almost two and one-half years after his original request. Under these circumstances, he argues, the agency failed to discharge its statutory obligation when it retrieved and released only documents that originated with and were in the possession of the CIA during the first month following the events to which his request principally related.
16 We begin by reviewing the legal principles that govern McGehee's claim. First, it is well established that the adequacy of an agency's response to a FOIA request is measured by a standard of reasonableness. As this court recently noted: 17 [A]n agency is not  'required to reorganize its [files] in response to'  a demand for information, but it does have a firm statutory duty to make reasonable efforts to satisfy it. 18 Founding Church of Scientology v. National Security Agency, 610 F.2d 824, 837 (D.C.Cir.1979) (footnotes omitted) (emphasis added). 17 7] This same standard of reasonableness that has been applied to test the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of agency search procedures is equally applicable to test the legality of an agency rule establishing a temporal limit to its search effort. In other words, a temporal limit pertaining to FOIA searches (such as the time-of-request cut-off policy that is at issue in this case) is only valid when the limitation is consistent with the agency's duty to take reasonable steps to ferret out requested documents. 18 19 Second, we hold that the agency bears the burden of establishing that any limitations on the search it undertakes in a particular case comport with its obligation to conduct a reasonably thorough investigation. It seems to us clear that the burden of persuasion on this matter is properly imposed on the agency. The Act explicitly assigns to the agency the burden of persuasion with regard to the closely related issue of the legitimacy of the agency's invocation of a statutory exemption to justify withholding of material. 19 Two considerations indicate that the same rule should govern the issue before us. One is that the information bearing upon the reasonableness of any temporal or other limitation on a search effort is within the agency's exclusive control. 20 The other is that the Act as a whole is clearly written so as to favor the disclosure of any documents not covered by one of the enumerated exemptions. 21 Insofar as burdens of persuasion are generally assigned to parties advancing disfavored contentions, 22 the agency should bear the responsibility of convincing the trier of fact that its less than comprehensive search is reasonable under the circumstances. 23 20 Third, the fact that the subject of this appeal is the grant of appellee's motion for summary judgment means that the agency must satisfy a significant legal standard in order to carry its burden. The standard has been stated as follows: 21 It is well settled in Freedom of Information Act cases as in any others that [s]ummary judgment may be granted only if the moving party proves that no substantial and material facts are in dispute and that he is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. ... [Moreover, the]  'inferences to be drawn from the underlying facts ... must be viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion.'  22 Church of Scientology, 610 F.2d at 836 (footnotes omitted). 24 Thus, for the CIA to have properly prevailed in the case at bar, it must have shown that no material fact relevant to the reasonableness of its use of a time-of-request cut-off date was in dispute and that the evidence established that the procedure employed was reasonable as a matter of law. In deciding whether the agency had made such a showing, the District Court was entitled to rely upon affidavits submitted by the agency, describing its search procedures and explaining why a more thorough investigation would have been unduly burdensome. Id. 25 But such affidavits would suffice only if they were relatively detailed, nonconclusory and not impugned by evidence in the record of bad faith on the part of the agency. Id. 26 23
24 In light of the foregoing principles, we must now determine whether the District Court fairly could have concluded that the CIA's decision to limit its search to documents in its possession as of the date of McGehee's finalized request was consistent with its statutory obligations. The agency would have us decide this question from a generic standpoint; it argues that language in the FOIA and authoritative case law interpreting the statute establish that the use of a time-of-request cut-off date is always reasonable. However, we are convinced that none of the arguments advanced by the agency to support this sweeping claim survives scrutiny. 25 The CIA first points to the statutory provision requiring that the materials sought by a FOIA request be reasonably describe[d]. 27 That provision pertains to the subject matter, location and form of materials sought by a request, not to the times at which responsive documents are acquired. 28 The CIA next directs our attention to two cases holding that an agency has no duty continuously to update its responses to a FOIA request. 29 The doctrine tentatively established 30 by those decisions is inapposite. The question presented in this case is whether, when an agency first releases documents to a requester, it may use as a cut-off date the time of his original demand. That an agency has no obligation, after it has once responded fully to a FOIA request, to 'run what might amount to a loose-leaf service'  for the benefit of the applicant 31 has little bearing on the issue before us. Finally, the CIA points to case law suggesting that one cannot modify a FOIA request in mid-litigation. 32 Those decisions establish, at most, that a requester is not permitted to alter or refine the subjects to which he originally directed attention; they have nothing to do with the legality of the use of the time of a request as a temporal limit to a FOIA search. 33 26
27 Having concluded that neither the terms of the statute nor the case law interpreting them supports a claim that the use of a time-of-request cut-off date is always proper, we are compelled to turn to the particular facts of the case before us to assess the reasonableness of the agency's conduct. McGehee directs our attention to circumstances that, on their face, cast considerable doubt on the merits of the agency's procedure. The CIA took almost two and one-half years to respond to McGehee's request. Yet, when it finally released documents, the CIA chose to limit itself to records that originated with and were possessed by the agency during the first 35 days following the Jonestown Tragedy. Were these facts all that appeared in the record, we would be very hard pressed to sustain the agency's actions. 28 The CIA attempts to dispel the skepticism to which the foregoing circumstances give rise by arguing that it would be exceedingly difficult to conduct its processing of FOIA requests on any other basis. In the affidavit of John Bacon submitted to the District Court, in its brief to this court, and in oral argument, the agency has consistently maintained that uniform use of a time-of-request cut-off date is essential to avoid an administrative nightmare. To support this claim, the agency points to the benefits of precis[ion] (the value of having a single cut-off date that all agency divisions know in advance), 34 the confusion that might be engendered by different agency components using different cutoff dates (e.g., each division using the date at which it commenced searching for documents), 35 the alleged cost and inconvenience to the agency of conducting the successive, duplicative searches that might be necessary if the date of a final response or the date of litigation were employed as a cut-off date, 36 and the disruption of the agency's fee schedules that would accompany the use of anything other than its present procedure. 37 29 In the absence of more detailed substantiation, these claims strike us as either unpersuasive or irrelevant. Indeed, alternative procedures, without the flaws of the time-of-request cut-off policy and without any real potential for the administrative nightmares alleged by appellee, readily come to mind. The following procedure is an example: 30 SAMPLE PROCEDURE APPLYING A REASONABLE CUT-OFF DATE TO A FOIA SEARCH 31 Soon after the CIA first receives a request, IPD tasks divisions of the agency it considers likely to have access to responsive documents. Those divisions determine whether they have any such materials 38 and so inform IPD. IPD then notifies the requester that the agency possesses some relevant documents and will process his request as soon as it has completed processing all requests it received earlier. When the request nears the head of the queue, IPD instructs each agency division that it thinks might possess relevant records to conduct, at that time, a thorough search for all responsive documents in its possession, to retrieve identified records forthwith, and to submit them to the central office for evaluation by persons able to determine whether any material is exempt. Substantive review follows promptly and all nonexempt material is released.