Opinion ID: 779527
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Deliberative

Text: 21 The underlying purpose of the deliberative process privilege is to ensure that agencies are not forced `to operate in a fishbowl.' Id. We must, therefore, focus on the effect of the materials' release: the key question in Exemption 5 cases [is] whether the disclosure of materials would expose an agency's decision-making process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion within the agency and thereby undermine the agency's ability to perform its functions. Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original). Thus, [p]redecisional materials are privileged to the extent that they reveal the mental processes of decision-makers. Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 22 Based on several factors, Assembly affirmed the district court's conclusion that the adjusted data generated in Census 1990 were not deliberative. Id. at 922-23. Significantly, release of the data would not have enabled the public to reconstruct any protected deliberative process, because it would have been impossible to derive the formulas, or the process that created the formulas, from the adjusted data. Id. at 922-23. Assembly also noted that DOC already had disclosed most of its decisional process by revealing the method used to generate the adjusted data, as well as the adjusted census figures for the national, state, and city levels, and one-half of the adjusted figures at the block level. Id. 23 The district court in this case found that, just as in Assembly, release of the bare numbers by themselves would not reveal any protected decision-making process. DOC argues, however, that factual distinctions take this case outside the result in Assembly. DOC had attempted to withhold in Assembly only one-half of the block-level adjusted data, whereas here it attempts to withhold all adjusted figures below those aggregated at the national level. We agree with the district court that this distinction is not legally significant. Although we noted in Assembly that the extent the adjusted numbers had been disclosed weighed in favor of the district court's conclusion that the remaining block-level adjusted data would not reveal any deliberative process, that fact was not crucial to our holding. Significantly, our decision in Assembly did not turn on waiver because, as we explained, [a]gencies should not be penalized for openness. See id. at 922-23 n. 5. Thus, as in Assembly, [w]e consider prior disclosures only to determine whether the disclosure of [the adjusted data] would expose the decision-making process any more than it has already been disclosed. Id. 24 DOC further maintains that the 2000 adjusted figures are deliberative because they are the product of a complex and elastic statistical model which constitutes a protected opinion. We recognize that numbers can constitute deliberative material where they represent opinions and subjective judgments created to assist in the decision-making process, or where they would otherwise so expose that process. 6 However, we rejected DOC's argument on this ground in Assembly: 25 [T]he adjusted data would not reveal anything about the most sensitive decision the Secretary had to make, namely which set of figures (adjusted or unadjusted) should be adopted as the official United States Census. That decision involved the Secretary's judgment as to which figures best estimated the actual population of the United States. The bare numbers reveal nothing about the process informing that judgment. 26 Id. at 922. 27 Here, as in Assembly, the district court found that the adjustment process cannot be determined from the adjusted figures alone. Additionally, the Bureau has already disclosed the method and procedures used to generate adjusted data in 2000, as well as the factors it considered important in deciding which data to release as the official census numbers. Though derived through a refined process designed to improve upon that used in 1990, the adjusted data generated as part of Census 2000 retain the same character as the adjusted data at issue in Assembly. Thus, we agree with the district court that disclosure of the adjusted numbers would not expose any protected deliberative process. 28 Finally, we reject DOC's argument that Exemption 5 applies because disclosure will chill future adjustment decisions. The thrust of its chilling effect argument is that DOC will be less likely to adjust census data in the future if forced to disclose the adjusted data generated during Census 2000 because it will not want to be forced again to release unreliable data to the public. But this argument did not permit non-disclosure in Assembly. See id. at 923 ([I]naccuracy is not a basis for FOIA exemption.). See also Petroleum, 976 F.2d at 1436-37 (noting that any concerns with public confusion caused by release of erroneous information could be allayed by warning FOIA requesters that the information is unofficial and disclaiming responsibility for any errors or gaps). Accordingly, DOC's chilling effect argument does not permit nondisclosure under FOIA here.