Opinion ID: 2776675
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Department Documents

Text: Right to Life also seeks internal Department documents that are withheld under Exemption 5. Exemption 5 shields documents that are normally immune from civil discovery, including those protected by the deliberative process and attorney-client privileges. See Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132, 149-55 (1975); see also Elec. Frontier Found. v. United States Dep't of Justice, 739 F.3d 1, 7 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (Exemption 5 applies to documents that are predecisional and deliberative, meaning they reflect advisory opinions, recommendations, and deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated) (quotations and citations omitted); Mead Data Central, Inc. v. United States Dep't of Air Force, 566 F.2d 242, 252 (D.C. Cir. 1977) (Exemption 5 is intended to protect the quality of agency 8 The district court applied the lessened standard to voluntary submissions, enunciated in Critical Mass Energy Project v. Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n, 975 F.2d 871, 879 (D.C. Cir. 1992). See New Hampshire Right to Life v. Dep't of Health and Human Serv., 976 F.Supp.2d 43, 54 (D. N.H. Sept. 30, 2013). We decline at this time to adopt that lessened standard for voluntary submissions. -16- decision-making by preventing the disclosure requirement of the FOIA from cutting off the flow of information to agency decisionmakers. Certainly this covers professional advice on legal questions which bears on those decisions.). Exemption 5 protects government agencies from being 'forced to operate in a fishbowl.' Id. (quoting Envtl. Prot. Agency v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 87 (1973)). It facilitates government decision making by: (1) assuring subordinates will feel free to provide uninhibited opinions, (2) protecting against premature disclosure of proposed government policies, and (3) preventing confusion among the public that may result from releasing various rationales for agency action. Providence Journal Co. v. United States Dep't of Army, 981 F.2d 552, 557 (1st Cir. 1992)(quoting Coastal States Gas Corp. v. Dep't of Energy, 617 F.2d 854, 866 (D.C. Cir. 1980)). Right to Life advances two arguments for rejecting the Department's reliance on Exemption 5: First, it argues that some of the documents that are outside the scope of the attorney-client privilege are also not predecisional as a matter of simple chronology; and, second, it argues that the Department waived any objection to producing the documents that reflect the opinions of Department lawyers because the Department adopted the opinions of legal counsel as policy of the Department. We address each argument in turn. -17-
To fit within Exemption 5, the Department must demonstrate that the communications were both predecisional and deliberative. Providence Journal, 981 F.2d at 557 (internal quotation omitted). Right to Life argues that the documents are not deliberative only because they are not predecisional, so we limit our inquiry to whether they are indeed predecisional. A document is predecisional if the agency can: (1) pinpoint the specific agency decision to which the document correlates, (2) establish that its author prepared the document for the purpose of assisting the agency official charged with making the agency decision, and (3) verify that the document precedes, in temporal sequence, the decision to which it relates. Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The dispute here centers on the temporal sequence of Department documents and decisions, and on identifying the decisions to which the particular documents relate. The following chronology outlines the relevant decisional timeline. On August 8, 2011, there was an e-mail chain (Vaughn index category 11) between Department employees and Office of General Counsel attorneys regarding whether the Department could legally issue a replacement grant. On August 9, Secretary Sebelius was briefed on the issue. Subsequently, on August 10, the White House was also briefed on this alternative plan. Right to Life -18- asserts that this briefing constituted approval from the White House. Right to Life cites as evidence of White House approval an informal e-mail stating, [t]he WH was briefed and they are getting down to pennies and nickels. On August 12, there was an e-mail chain (Vaughn index category 15) discussing a draft document regarding funding for the replacement grant. On August 18, there was another e-mail chain addressing funding for the replacement grant (Vaughn index category 18). Finally, on August 19, OASH's executive officer signed a blank line indicating Approve underneath the heading Decision on the Sole Source Justification memorandum. On September 28, 2011, three out of five members of the New Hampshire Executive Council filed a letter protesting the Department's decision with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), carbon copying Kathleen Sebelius, Department Secretary. In a letter dated October 5, 2011, the GAO declined to review the Executive Council members' protest for lack of jurisdiction. The Department later decided not to provide its own response. Right to Life contends that the decision to directly award Title X funds to Planned Parenthood was made at the White House briefing on August 10, 2011. If this were true, all pertinent documents created after that date would be postdecisional, and thus not exempt from disclosure under Exemption 5. See id. The record, however, does not support Right to Life's -19- contention. On its face, the e-mail Right to Life cites as evidence of White House approval indicates that a decision, while perhaps close, had not yet been finalized. The phrase getting down to pennies and nickels plainly suggests a pending decision, not a final decision for Exemption 5 purposes. That leaves August 19--the date the OASH executive signed the approval line on the Sole Source Justification memorandum--as the date the decision was made to proceed with a direct award process.9 We therefore reject Right to Life's argument that Vaughn index categories 15–16 and 18–19, all created prior to August 19 were post-decisional documents.10 We turn next to the documents covered by Vaughn index categories 23–25 and 33. All of these documents post-date the August 19 decision to proceed with a non-competitive sole-source grant process. Therefore, Right to Life argues, they are not predecisional. The problem with this argument is that there were 9 Throughout its brief, Right to Life touts the title of the Sole Source Justification memorandum, and suggests that it indicates that the substance of the memorandum itself is a post hoc justification of a decision that had been made several days earlier. Read as a whole, the document's substance makes clear that it is a recommendation letter, seeking approval from a superior: I recommend that you approve this request for a sole source replacement grant to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. 10 Categories 16 and 19 are undated, but, given their content, necessarily predate the August 19 decision. Category 16 covers drafts of a rationale for the grant funding amount. Category 19 covers early drafts of the Sole Source Justification memorandum. -20- other relevant decisions made on or after August 19, including: (1) the Department's decision on September 9 to publicly announce its intent to issue the grant award to Planned Parenthood, and (2) the Department's decision to not provide a separate response to New Hampshire's protest of that direct award. Vaughn index categories 23–25 relate to and pre-date the September 9 public announcement that the Department intended to directly award a grant to Planned Parenthood. These documents deal with the Department's decision of how and what to communicate to the public, which is a decision in and of itself. Vaughn index categories 23–25 are not post-decisional. Right to Life simply misidentifies the decision to which these documents relate. Similarly, the documents included in Vaughn index category 33 involve communications between Department employees and attorneys relating to whether the Department should also respond to the New Hampshire Executive Council's protest. This e-mail chain necessarily predates any decision by the Department to withhold a separate response to the protest. We are satisfied that the Department appropriately met its burden for withholding these documents under Exemption 5.
Adopting Counsel's Legal Advice. In responding to Right to Life's FOIA request, the Department revealed that an attorney in the Office of General Counsel had advised the Director of the OASH Grants Management -21- Office that it was legal to issue a replacement grant. The Department redacted any material that revealed the basis or reasoning behind such advice. The Department never publicly announced either the advice or the reasoning behind the advice. Nor does it rely on the advice in this litigation. Right to Life advances a single argument for finding that the Department must now produce the communication with OCG counsel. It claims that, by issuing the replacement grant, the Department adopted counsel's advice as policy of the Agency.11 The record provides no factual support for this claim unless one presumes that every time an agency acts in accord with counsel's view it necessarily adopts counsel's view as policy of the Agency. As a categorical rule this makes no sense, especially where counsel's legal advice is simply that there is no impediment to the agency doing what it wants to do. For precedent, Right to Life points only to Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132 (1975), and Brennan Center v. United States Dep't of Justice, 697 F.3d 184 (2nd Cir. 2012). Each of these opinions, however, hinged disclosure of legal counsel's advice on whether the agency actually adopted the reasoning behind counsel's opinion as its own. See Renegotation Bd. v. Grumman Aircraft Eng'g Corp., 421 U.S. 168, 184–85 (1975) 11 Right to Life does not argue that the Department waived its privilege by failing to redact from the Sole Source Justification memorandum the short description of the conclusion of counsel. -22- (companion case to Sears, holding that [if] the evidence utterly fails to support the conclusion that the reasoning in the reports is adopted by the Board as its reasoning, even when it agrees with the conclusion of a report, . . . the reports are not final opinions and do fall within Exemption 5.); Brennan Center, 697 F.3d at 197 ([T]he fact that the agencies acted in conformity with the . . . memoranda [does not] establish that the agencies adopted their reasoning.). Here, the Department never adopted, or even mentioned, counsel's reasoning. Mere reliance on a document's conclusions--at most what we have here--does not necessarily involve reliance on a document's analysis; both will ordinarily be needed before a court may properly find adoption or incorporation by reference. National Council of La Raza v. Dep't of Justice, 411 F.3d 350, 358 (2nd Cir. 2005); Elec. Frontier Found. v. United States Dep't of Justice, 739 F.3d 1, 10–11 (D.C. Cir. 2014) ([T]he Court has refused to equate reference to a report's conclusions with adoption of its reasoning, and it is the latter that destroys the privilege.) It is a good thing that Government officials on appropriate occasion confirm with legal counsel that what the officials wish to do is legal. To hold that the Government must turn over its communications with counsel whenever it acts in this manner could well reduce the likelihood that advice will be sought. Nothing in the FOIA compels such a result. -23-