Opinion ID: 316593
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the factual/ deliberative test in light of the present case

Text: 19 In the case at bar this factual versus deliberative distinction is inadequate to resolve the difficult question whether the factual summaries should be exempt from disclosure. The difficulty arises because of the nature of the documents. It is agreed that the summaries in question are in large part compilations of facts introduced in evidence at the hearings, and on the public record. 28 Montrose contends that such factual materials must be disclosed under the prior decisions discussed above. In contrast, EPA contends that the mere compilation of a summary of the evidence on record, performed by staff members for the use of the Administrator in formulating his decision and final order, is itself a part of the internal deliberative process which should be kept confidential and within the agency. What will be disclosed here if the District Judge's order is upheld, argues the EPA, 20 are not 'facts' not yet possessed by Montrose Chemical Corporation, but rather the judgmental evaluation and condensation of the more than 10,000 pages of facts from which the Administrator gained an overview of the record in order to assist his decisionmaking. The only new 'information' which disclosure of these summaries would provide Montrose concerns the mental processes of the agency-- a process which Montrose is not entitled to probe. 29 21 This statement by EPA hits the heart of the issue here: Can Montrose use the FOIA to discover what factual information the Administrator's aides cited, discarded, compared, evaluated, and analyzed to assist the Administrator in formulating his decision? Or would such discovery be an improper probing of the mental processes behind a decision of an agency? These questions must be considered in the light of the statutory provision of FIFRA, which requires the Administrator's decision cancelling pesticide registrations to be 'based only on substantial evidence of record.' 30 Of equal importance, it must also be borne in mind that Ruckelshaus did render a 50-page decision, citing voluminous facts and statistics, and explained in detail the rationale of his, the Administrator's, final decision. The world was not left in doubt as to either the factual basis or the reasoning behind the final product. 22 Our solution rests on the interpretation of the purpose of exemption 5. If the exemption is intended to protect only deliberative materials, then a factual summary of evidence on the record would not be exempt from disclosure. But if the exemption is to be interpreted to protect the agency's deliberative process, then a factual summary prepared to aid an administrator in resolution of a difficult, complex question would be within the scope of the exemption. 23 The EPA assistants here were exercising their judgment as to what record evidence would be important to the Administrator in making his decision regarding the DDT registrations. Even if they cited portions of the evidence verbatim, the assistants were making an evaluation of the relative significance of the facts recited in the record; separating the pertinent from the impertinent is a judgmental process, sometimes of the highest order; no one can make a selection of evidence without exercising some kind of judgment, unless he is simply making a random selection. 24 Ruckelshaus' use of his assistants to winnow down the evidence was similar in many ways to a judge's use of his law clerk to sift through the report of a special master or other lengthy materials in the record. In both situations, when faced with a voluminous record, the decision-maker may wisely utilize his assistants to help him determine what materials will be significant in reaching a proper decision. 25 To probe the summaries of record evidence would be the same as probing the decision-making process itself. To require disclosure of the summaries would result in publication of the evaluation and analysis of the multitudinous facts made by the Administrator's aides and in turn studied by him in making his decision. Whether he weighed the correct factors, whether his judgmental scales were finely adjusted and delicately operated, disappointed litigants may not probe his deliberative process. 31 26 The bar against probing the mental processes of an executive branch decision-maker is not recently derived from exemption 5 of FOIA. Indeed, the courts have long recognized the sanctity of the decision-making process, absent discernible likely gross abuse. Perhaps the most influential cases in explicating this area of the law have been the Morgan 32 decisions of the 1930's. In this litigation series, an order of the Secretary of Agriculture establishing maximum rates to be charged by market agencies at the Kansas City Stockyards was challenged by the market agencies on a variety of grounds. In Morgan I, where the nature of the hearing was at issue, Chief Justice Hughes indicated that in an administrative ratemaking proceeding, as in a judicial proceeding, 'the one who decides must hear.' 33 The decision-maker cannot be one who has neither considered the evidence nor the argument. But, as Chief Justice Hughes continued, this rule does not preclude the wise use of assistants in the administrative process. He specifically suggested that evidence could be taken by a hearing examiner, and this evidence could then be 'sifted and analyzed by competent subordinates' 34 of the administrator. 27 Morgan II involved in part the question of court review of the Secretary of Agriculture's decision-making process. Although the Court, again per Chief Justice Hughes, held that a full hearing had not been given, it noted that 'it was not the function of the court to probe the mental processes of the Secretary in reaching his conclusions if he gave the hearing which the law required.' 35 This statement was reaffirmed by the Court in Morgan IV, per Justice Frankfurter. 36 Morgan IV also held that examination of the Secretary concerning the process by which he decided the rate issue, including questions on the manner and extent of his review of the record and his discussion with assistants, was improper and should not have occurred. Justice Frankfurter analogized the position of the Secretary to that of a judge, and indicated that the integrity of both the administrative process and the judicial process must be respected; scrutiny of either process was not to be permitted, absent extraordinary circumstances. 37 28 The protection of the deliberative process of agency decision-makers, stressed in the Morgan litigation, has also been reflected in cases under FOIA. This Circuit and others have emphasized that the purpose of exemption 5 is not simply to encourage frank intra-agency discussion of policy, but also to ensure that the mental processes of decision-makers are not subject to public scrutiny. 38 And Mink reaffirms that the consultative functions are to be protected by exemption 5. 39 29 The use of the staff-prepared summaries by the Administrator does not conflict with his duty to decide the case on substantial evidence of record. Ruckelshaus has sworn in his affidavit that the summaries contain only evidence on the public record and analyses thereof. 40 He was not using the summaries to obtain new facts not on the record. Thus, the litigants and the public have already had full access to the record on which the decision was made, and what they are now seeking is the analysis of risks and benefits attributed to DDT made by the Administrator's aides to assist him in his ultimate decision. In effect, the litigants seek to know what advice as to importance and unimportance of facts the Administrator received, and how much of it he accepted. Such information is most emphatically not part of the public record. To argue, then, that the Administrator has not decided on a public record ignores the real question of what is the public record. 30 Furthermore, this case is distinctly different from other FOIA cases where a decision-maker has referred to an intra-agency memorandum as a basis for his decision. In such cases this court has required disclosure of the memoranda, for, once adopted as a rationale for a decision, the memorandum becomes part of the public record. 41 Here the Administrator at no time refers to any evidence not on the record. 31 Similarly, our case here is to be distinguished from a situation in which the only place certain facts are to be found is in the administrative assistants' memoranda. Here all the facts are in the public record. What is not in, and should not be in, the public record is the administrative assistants' evaluation and selection of certain facts from the 9200-page public record. 42 If we confront a case in which some facts are only found in the aide's memorandum, then the principles of Vaughn v. Rosen 43 and Cuneo v. Schlesinger 44 would be applicable, i.e., the Government would bear the burden of putting the record in such shape that all facts are in the public record, separate from analysis which need not be disclosed. 32 It is possible that the assistants in winnowing down the record may have made errors of inclusion or excluion, or even gross distortions of fact. But these possibilities reflect human errors and misjudgments which are part of the deliberative process. The fact that errors may creep in and mislead the final decision-maker merely suggests that there may be errors in the deliberative or adjudicatory process; it does not mean that the preliminary studies by the staff are separate from the adjudicatory process or should be classified as part of the public record. The work of the assistants in separating the wheat from the chaff is surely just as much part of the deliberative process as is the later milling by running the grist through the mind of the administrator. And that some wheat is thrown away and some chaff included with the grain does not alter the nature of the process, even though it reflects error on the part of the assistants.