Opinion ID: 489286
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: FOIA Exemption (b)(5)

Text: 11 FOIA Exemption (b)(5) protects from disclosure those inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(b)(5) (1982). Though the Supreme Court has noted that this language clearly contemplates that the public is entitled to all such memoranda or letters that a private party could discover in litigation with the agency, Mink, 410 U.S. at 86, 93 S.Ct. at 835, the exact relationship between ordinary civil discovery and Exemption (b)(5), particularly the application of discovery privileges under the exemption, has bedeviled the courts since the Act's inception. Id. The Supreme Court, seeing the need for a broadly sweeping rule on the matter, has insisted that the needs of a particular plaintiff are not relevant to the exemption's applicability, and has held repeatedly that only documents normally or routinely disclosable in civil discovery fall outside the protection of the exemption. See NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132, 149 & n. 16, 95 S.Ct. 1504, 1515 & n. 16, 44 L.Ed.2d 29 (1975); FTC v. Grolier Inc., 462 U.S. 19, 26, 103 S.Ct. 2209, 2213, 76 L.Ed.2d 387 (1983); United States v. Weber Aircraft Corp., 465 U.S. 792, 799, 104 S.Ct. 1488, 1492, 79 L.Ed.2d 814 (1984). To resolve the present case we must grapple directly with the confusion plaguing the courts' efforts to apply the law of civil discovery privilege in Exemption (b)(5) analysis. 12 Appellant argues that the attorney notes and witness statements Ms. Martin seeks are classic attorney work product, privileged under the Supreme Court's opinion in Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 67 S.Ct. 385, 91 L.Ed. 451 (1947). As these documents would not be released normally or routinely in civil discovery, OSC insists, they fall squarely within the Court's interpretation of the exemption. See Sears, Roebuck, 421 U.S. at 154-55, 95 S.Ct. at 1518 (recognizing that Exemption (b)(5) incorporates the work-product privilege). 13 The district court interpreted Exemption (b)(5) more narrowly. The court found that, whatever the scope of the attorney work-product privilege in civil discovery, under Exemption (b)(5) that privilege extends only as far as does the general deliberative process executive privilege enjoyed by agencies. The court reasoned that Congress enacted Exemption (b)(5) only to protect the free and frank discussion of policy shielded by the deliberative process privilege, rather than to incorporate civil discovery privileges wholesale. Consequently, because factual material is not privileged under the deliberative process privilege, purely factual work product, even if otherwise privileged, does not come within Exemption (b)(5). In reaching this conclusion, the court relied primarily on the legislative history of FOIA and on two circuit court cases that adopt the same view. See Memorandum and Order, April 9, 1986, at 4, JA 87, citing S.Rep. No. 813, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. 9 (1965); Robbins Tire & Rubber Co. v. NLRB, 563 F.2d 724, 735 (5th Cir.1977), rev'd on other grounds, 437 U.S. 214, 98 S.Ct. 2311, 57 L.Ed.2d 159 (1978); Deering Milliken, Inc. v. Irving, 548 F.2d 1131, 1138 (4th Cir.1977). 14 The words of a statute presumptively establish its meaning, and the intent of Congress behind it. State of Montana v. Clark, 749 F.2d 740, 747 (D.C.Cir.1984). Here, those words point clearly, unequivocally, to the incorporation of all civil discovery rules into FOIA Exemption (b)(5). Nothing on the face of the provision indicates it incorporates the deliberative process privilege in a vacuum. We find neither the legislative history of the Act nor the reasoning in Robbins Tire and Deering Milliken sufficiently powerful to require the conclusion that Congress meant Exemption (b)(5) to extend to the limits of the deliberative process executive privilege, but no farther. 15 Of course, the courts must take care to construe the FOIA exemptions as narrowly as consistent with efficient Government operation. Weber Aircraft, 465 U.S. at 802, 104 S.Ct. at 1494; Grolier, 462 U.S. at 23, 103 S.Ct. at 2212; Department of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 360-61, 96 S.Ct. 1592, 1598-99, 48 L.Ed.2d 11 (1976); Mink, 410 U.S. at 79, 93 S.Ct. at 832. Nevertheless, if Congress had intended this exemption solely to encourage frank discussion within an agency, it could easily have drafted language to make that intention clear. Congress did not do so. 16 The only pieces of evidence offered by Ms. Martin to support a contrary interpretation, a few sentences in the Act's legislative history, in no way conflict with the plain meaning of the statute's language. The passages she claims demonstrate a deliberative process cap on the exemption merely speak to the need for frank discussion in policymaking, and to the concern that without Exemption (b)(5) government might be forced to operate in a fishbowl. S.Rep. No. 813 at 9. The legislative history does not suggest that this concern for frank discussion was exclusive, or that Congress intended Exemption (b)(5) to be a mere surrogate for the deliberative process privilege. As the Supreme Court succinctly stated in Weber Aircraft, [T]he legislative history of Exemption 5 does not contain the kind of compelling evidence that would be necessary to persuade us to look beyond the plain statutory language. Id. 17 Despite its simplicity, however, this analysis is not uncontroversial. The Supreme Court has not specifically adopted any position on the question, and, as noted above, two circuits have taken a contrary approach. See Robbins Tire, 563 F.2d at 734-35; Deering Milliken, 548 F.2d at 1137-38. Both courts found that Exemption (b)(5) does not shield purely factual work-product material from disclosure under FOIA, and based this conclusion in substantial part on the Supreme Court's decision in EPA v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 93 S.Ct. 827, 35 L.Ed.2d 119 (1973). We think they misread Mink, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's recent interpretations of that opinion. 18 Mink 's discussion of Exemption (b)(5) is entirely an exposition of the deliberative process privilege. The parties did not raise an exemption claim based on the work-product privilege. Mink, 410 U.S. at 90-91, 93 S.Ct. at 837. The Court's distinction between facts and deliberations, emphasized by both the district court in this case and the Robbins Tire and Deering Milliken courts, clearly applies only to the executive privilege, not to all discovery privileges under Exemption (b)(5). To emphasize the limited character of its analysis, the Mink Court carefully noted that the exemption does not allow the withholding of factual material otherwise available on discovery merely because it was placed in a memorandum with matters of law, policy or opinion. 410 U.S. at 91, 93 S.Ct. at 837 (emphasis added). Materials that fall within the Hickman v. Taylor work-product privilege are not otherwise available on discovery. Mink simply does not apply the fact/deliberative process distinction to every Exemption (b)(5) case. 19 The Mink opinion, in fact, specifically recognizes and discusses legislative history that makes our conclusion virtually inescapable. Pointing to an earlier version of Exemption (b)(5) that would have permitted [a]ll factual material in Government records ... to be made available to the public, Mink, 410 U.S. at 91, 93 S.Ct. at 837, quoting S.Rep. No. 1219, 88th Cong., 2d Sess. 7 (1964) (emphasis in original), the Court noted that this extreme approach had been severely criticized because it would permit compelled disclosure of an otherwise private document. 410 U.S. at 91, 93 S.Ct. at 837. This severely criticized (and ultimately rejected) approach is precisely that presently advanced by Ms. Martin. Though the Court in Mink took pains to remind the lower courts that the defeat of the earlier, more limited exemption did not mean that all factual material is exempt, id., that defeat is strong evidence that Congress did not intend to impose an across-the-board fact/deliberative process distinction in Exemption (b)(5) cases. 20 The Supreme Court's Weber Aircraft opinion, decided after Robbins Tire and Deering Milliken, puts any lingering doubt on the question to rest. In that case, the Court explicitly rejected the notion that purely factual material can never qualify for protection under Exemption 5. 465 U.S. at 800 n. 17, 104 S.Ct. at 1493 n. 17. Mink, the Court explained, merely states that otherwise nonprivileged factual material cannot be withheld under Exemption 5 merely because it appears in the same document as privileged material, and that Congress intended to adopt relevant case law on privilege. Id. (emphasis added). In light of this straightforward enunciation of the limits of the fact/deliberative process distinction in Exemption (b)(5), we think it entirely possible that the Fourth and Fifth Circuits would decide Robbins Tire and Deering Milliken differently if confronted with those cases today. 21 One other critical consideration compels us to adopt this interpretation of Exemption (b)(5). By applying the fact/deliberative process distinction to a work-product privilege case, the district court's decision effectively allows FOIA to be used as a supplement to civil discovery. Not only does this use of FOIA undercut the exemption's apparent function (the exemption on its face seems designed to avoid precisely this possibility), it also runs afoul of the decisions of the Supreme Court, which have consistently rejected such a reading of FOIA. Weber Aircraft, 465 U.S. at 801, 104 S.Ct. at 1493. Ms. Martin was unable to obtain these documents using ordinary civil discovery methods, and FOIA should not be read to alter that result. 22 Ms. Martin also asserts that this court, in Mervin v. FTC, 591 F.2d 821 (D.C.Cir.1978), adopted the fact/deliberative process distinction for Exemption (b)(5) work-product privilege cases. We can find no such holding in Mervin. In that case the court refused to segregate allegedly purely factual material from work-product documents. 591 F.2d at 826. The court actually emphasized that the deliberative process privilege, not the work-product privilege, is the source of the fact/deliberative process distinction, and specifically noted that factual elements can seldom be segregated from attorney work product. Id. at 827. Any implicit statement that factual materials might be segregable from work product in some cases is at most a dictum, and an unarticulated dictum at that. Mervin is in no way precedent for appellee's proposition; even if we were inclined to follow the reasoning of its implicit dictum, we would be hard pressed to say just what the scope of that sotto voce statement might be. 23 Ms. Martin argues as well that Exemption (b)(5) does not apply to these documents because they are not inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums. She alleges, without evidence, that some of the witnesses whose statements are at issue here were not government employees at the time the statements were made. As OSC specifically assures us that all the witnesses were employees of the Air Force at the time of their statements, we reject Ms. Martin's argument. 24 Naturally, if the privilege asserted by OSC in this case had been the deliberative process executive privilege itself, the district court would have been correct to evaluate the factual character of these documents as one factor in its Exemption (b)(5) analysis. But it is the work-product privilege that drives this case, not the deliberative process privilege. The work-product privilege simply does not distinguish between factual and deliberative material. Neither does Exemption (b)(5), in itself, contain any such limitation on its incorporation of civil discovery privilege in general, or the work-product privilege specifically. In sum, we find that if the work-product privilege protects the documents at issue here, Exemption (b)(5) protects them as well, regardless of their status as factual or deliberative. 25 Consequently, we must determine whether these documents fall within the work-product privilege. We find that they do. A clearer case for application of Hickman v. Taylor is difficult to imagine. In Hickman the Supreme Court held that witness statements prepared at the request of an attorney are privileged work product and not subject to discovery unless the discovering party can show the statements are essential to her case. 329 U.S. at 511, 67 S.Ct. at 393. The Court also held that attorney notes taken during witness interviews are, for all practical purposes, always privileged. Id. at 512-13, 67 S.Ct. at 394. Hickman, therefore, covers precisely the types of documents disputed in the case before us. MSPB denied Ms. Martin's civil discovery request because, as MSPB put it, the documents constitute classic examples of work product. MSPB Initial Decision at 5, JA 35. We agree with that characterization: Without doubt, these documents would not normally and routinely be released in civil discovery. We hold, therefore, that they are shielded from disclosure under FOIA by Exemption (b)(5). See Sears, Roebuck, 421 U.S. at 149 & n. 16, 95 S.Ct. at 1515 & n. 16; Grolier, 462 U.S. at 24, 103 S.Ct. at 2212. 26 Because we resolve the FOIA dispute on the basis of Exemption (b)(5), we have no occasion to consider OSC's argument that Exemption (b)(7) of the Act also protects these documents from disclosure.