Opinion ID: 586400
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Predecisional Prong

Text: 19 Exemption 5 cases contrast agency documents leading to a decision with documents explaining or interpreting the decision after the fact. Because an agency's interpretations of its decisions often become the working law of the agency, documents deemed postdecisional do not enjoy the protection of the deliberative process privilege. NLRB v. Sears, 421 U.S. at 153, 95 S.Ct. at 1517. This insures that the agency does not operate on the basis of secret law. Coastal States, 617 F.2d at 866. 20 [T]he line between predecisional documents and postdecisional documents may not always be a bright one. NLRB v. Sears, 421 U.S. at 152 n. 19, 95 S.Ct. at 1517 n. 19. This is surely the case here. Chronologically, the adjusted census tapes were created before the Secretary announced his decision not to adjust the census. But the tapes were prepared solely for the purpose of post-decision dissemination. 21 A document may be considered predecisional if it was prepared in order to assist an agency decisionmaker in arriving at his decision. Grumman Aircraft, 421 U.S. at 184, 95 S.Ct. at 1500. In this case, the district court found that the record does not support the inference that the adjusted block counts played a meaningful role in that process. This finding is not clearly erroneous. The only evidence DOC produced that the adjusted block counts, rather than the formulas that generated them, contributed to the decision not to adjust the census is the declaration of DOC official Mark Plant. Plant declared that he examined a random sample of 500 adjusted block counts (not all necessarily from California), but was unable to complete the analysis, which [he] did not regard as essential because of other analyses of this issue. In deposition, Plant explained that the sample he consulted was not included in the administrative record because it did not enter in any way direct or indirect into the Secretary's decision. Material which predates a decision chronologically, but did not contribute to that decision, is not predecisional in any meaningful sense. 22 DOC makes a further argument that the adjusted census tapes are predecisional because they may be used in the future by the Census Bureau in calculating its intercensal population estimates. This argument proves far too much. Any memorandum always will be predecisional if referenced to a decision that possibly may be made at some undisclosed time in the future. The district court did not clearly err by limiting its consideration to whether the tapes were predecisional to the Secretary's July 15, 1991 decision not to adjust the census. Characterizing these documents as 'predecisional' simply because they play into an ongoing audit process would be a serious warping of the meaning of the word. Coastal States, 617 F.2d at 868.