Court Opinion

ID: 9407977
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-11 00:00:35.092927+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:41.008423
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-10848    Document: 00516815456        Page: 1    Date Filed: 07/10/2023

           United States Court of Appeals
                for the Fifth Circuit                        United States Court of Appeals
                                                                      Fifth Circuit
                               ____________                         FILED
                                                                July 10, 2023
                                No. 22-10848
                                                                Lyle W. Cayce
                               ____________
                                                                     Clerk

   Harold Edward Rutila, IV,

                                                         Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                     versus

   United States Department of Transportation; Federal
   Aviation Administration,

                                          Defendants—Appellees.
                 ______________________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Northern District of Texas
                  USDC Nos. 3:16-CV-2911, 3:16-CV-3433
                 ______________________________

   Before King, Smith, and Elrod, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam:
         This action arises from several unsuccessful requests by Harold
   Edward Rutila, IV to the Federal Aviation Administration for records under
   the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 522. The district court granted
   summary judgment for the Department of Transportation and the Federal
   Aviation Administration. Upon review, we AFFIRM.
Case: 22-10848      Document: 00516815456            Page: 2   Date Filed: 07/10/2023

                                    No. 22-10848

                                          I.
          In 2016, Harold Edward Rutila, IV attended a Federal Aviation
   Administration (“FAA”) air traffic controller training program at the FAA
   Academy. Because he failed the final performance assessment, Rutila was not
   retained as a permanent air traffic controller.
          Several months later, Rutila submitted ten requests under the
   Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) to the FAA seeking various
   categories of records. Dissatisfied with the FAA’s responses to his requests,
   Rutila brought two suits against the FAA and its parent agency, the
   Department of Transportation (“DOT”; collectively with the FAA,
   “Appellees”), seeking, inter alia, injunctive relief compelling the release and
   disclosure of the requested agency records. The district court later
   consolidated the two lawsuits.
          Appellees moved to dismiss most of Rutila’s claims, and the district
   court dismissed seven of Rutila’s requests in May 2019 for lack of subject
   matter jurisdiction. Appellees then moved for summary judgment on the
   three remaining requests, which the district court granted in May 2020.
   Rutila appealed and argued that the district court erred in concluding that it
   did not have subject matter jurisdiction with respect to five of his requests.
   We agreed and reversed, holding that Rutila alleged facts sufficient to invoke
   the court’s subject matter jurisdiction, and remanded the case back to the
   district court. Rutila v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp., 12 F.4th 509, 511 (5th Cir.
   2021). On remand, Appellees moved for summary judgment a second time
   on the five revived requests, which the district court granted in June 2022.
          Rutila now appeals the district court’s judgment with respect to three
   of his requests: (1) FOIA Request 2016-009149 (“FOIA 9149”), which seeks
   FAA Academy Standard Operating Procedures (“SOPs”) and related
   emails; and (2) FOIA Request 2017-000862 (“FOIA 862”) and (3) FOIA

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   Request 2017-001174 (“FOIA 1174”), which respectively seek copies of
   specific individuals’ application software profiles and Windows Explorer
   directories and folder structures.
                                         II.
          FOIA “requires federal agencies to make Government records
   available to the public,” Milner v. Dep’t of the Navy, 562 U.S. 562, 564 (2011),
   and “empowers federal courts to order an ‘agency’ to produce ‘agency
   records improperly withheld’ from an individual requesting access,”
   Forsham v. Harris, 445 U.S. 169, 171 (1980) (quoting 5 U.S.C.
   § 552(a)(4)(B)). Most FOIA cases are resolved at summary judgment.
   Flightsafety Servs. Corp. v. Dep’t of Labor, 326 F.3d 607, 610 (5th Cir. 2003).
          We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment
   under FOIA, using the standards used by the district court in reviewing the
   agency’s decisions to deny access to or otherwise not produce the requested
   documents. Id. Summary judgment is proper “if the movant shows that there
   is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to
   judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).
                                         III.
                                         A.
          Rutila first challenges the district court’s conclusion that the FAA
   issued a timely demand for fees for the services required to retrieve the
   records sought by FOIA 9149. On September 7, 2016, Rutila submitted a
   request to the FAA seeking “FAA Academy Quality Assurance (AMA–
   505b) SOPs concerning evaluation procedures/methods/guidance/etc.,
   including emails concerning said guidance or modifications and
   interpretations to or regarding the guidance.” Four days later, on September
   11, Edward Drake, a FOIA Program Coordinator, responded to Rutila’s

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   request “needing clarification on the time frame [Rutila was] seeking
   regarding the requested SOP’s, i.e., what month(s) and year(s)?” He
   indicated that “[t]his request will not be processed until clarification is
   confirmed.” That same day, Rutila responded that, “[i]n terms of SOPs
   concerning    evaluation    procedures/methods/guidance/etc.,”         he    was
   “seeking a copy of the most current version(s) plus relevant notices and
   supplements, if any exist, as well as the version(s) used prior to the current
   one, plus its notices and supplements” and specified that, “[i]n terms of the
   time frame for emails requested, a period of 12 months beginning on
   September 7th, 2015 is acceptable.” The FAA then acknowledged receipt of
   FOIA 9149 on September 14.
          On September 16, Drake sought clarification from Rutila regarding the
   maximum amount he was willing to pay because the search “may be
   somewhat extensive.” Rutila responded that day indicating he would be
   willing to pay $25 but “may amend this maximum dollar amount” once he
   received a fee estimate. On October 7, Drake provided Rutila a fee estimate
   letter, which estimated the charges for the requested records to be $2,570. At
   that point, Rutila stated his belief that “the FAA is unable to assess fees for
   this request, as it is already overdue” and requested that it “be processed
   with a waiver of fees.” Rutila never paid the fees, and the FAA did not
   produce records responsive to his request.
          Generally, upon any FOIA request, an agency must “determine
   within 20 days (excepting Saturdays, Sundays, and legal public holidays)
   after the receipt of any such request whether to comply with such request.”
   5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i); see also 49 C.F.R. § 7.31(a) (requiring DOT to
   abide by the twenty-day deadline). When DOT fails to comply with this time
   limit, it generally does not assess search fees. 49 C.F.R. § 7.43(f). The parties
   disagree as to whether the FAA’s October 7 fee assessment was made within
   twenty business days of receiving Rutila’s FOIA request, which requires us

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   to determine at what time Rutila’s request qualified as a received FOIA
   request.
             DOT regulations provide that “[a] request is not considered to be a
   FOIA request if the record or records sought are insufficiently described such
   that DOT is unable to respond as required by FOIA.” 49 C.F.R. § 7.24(d).
   In such a case, the twenty-day clock “will not start to run until the request is
   determined by DOT to be sufficiently understood to enable DOT to respond
   as contemplated under FOIA (or would have been so determined with the
   exercise of due diligence by an employee of DOT) and is considered
   received.” Id. A “request is considered received when it is first received by
   the FOIA office to which it should have been originally sent . . . but in any
   event not later than ten Federal working days after it is first received by any
   DOT FOIA Requester Service Center.” Id. § 7.24(e). Furthermore,
   “DOT’s time limit for responding to a FOIA request . . . may be tolled one
   time to seek additional information needed to clarify the request and as often
   as necessary to clarify fee issues with the requester.” Id. § 7.24(f); see also id.
   § 7.35.
             If Rutila’s request constituted a received FOIA request on September
   7, when he first submitted his request, then the deadline for assessing fees
   had passed; if it was not a received FOIA request until September 9 or later,
   then the FAA met the deadline and the fee assessment was appropriate.
   Rutila addresses a different question in his briefing: whether DOT tolled the
   twenty-day working period “for the purpose of seeking additional
   information needed to clarify the request.” Id. § 7.35(a). He argues that the
   additional information requested on September 11 was not needed to clarify
   the request because Drake requested a timeframe for one category of
   records—the requested SOPs—and Rutila declined to provide any time
   limits for that portion of the request. Rutila concedes that, in his September
   11 reply, he limited the scope of the email portion of the request but contends

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   that this was not requested by Drake and thus not necessary to clarify the
   request. Because the FAA accepted Rutila’s request and generated a fee
   estimate despite his failure to provide a timeframe for the requested SOPs,
   he argues that this information cannot be considered necessary for
   clarification.
          But Rutila fails to address whether his initial September 7 request was
   sufficiently described such that it would be considered a FOIA request. Id.
   § 7.24(d). A request under FOIA must “[d]escribe the record or records
   sought to the fullest extent possible,” id. § 7.24(a)(5), and a request is
   sufficiently described for the purposes of FOIA if “the agency is able to
   determine precisely what records are being requested,” Kowalczyk v. Dep’t of
   Just., 73 F.3d 386, 388 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (quoting Yeager v. DEA, 678 F.2d
   315, 326 (D.C. Cir. 1982)). Rutila’s September 7 request did not meet this
   standard. In his request, Rutila stated that he sought “SOPs concerning
   evaluation procedures/methods/guidance/etc.”—he did not say whether he
   requested all such SOPs in the FAA’s possession, the current SOPs, or the
   SOPs that were in effect during a certain period. As Drake’s declaration
   explained, Drake “determined that the request as written was not a perfected
   request” because “the request as written appeared to seek many iterations of
   various Academy SOPs and related records and did not define a timeframe.”
          Rutila’s September 11 response provided additional information,
   which enabled the FAA to determine what records were being requested.
   Specifically, he explained that he was seeking “a copy of the most current
   version(s) plus relevant notices and supplements, if any exist, as well as the
   version(s) used prior to the current one, plus its notices and supplements.”
   Rutila had not indicated which versions of SOPs he was seeking in his initial
   request, and for this reason his contention that he did not provide additional
   information on September 11 relating to his request for SOPs is without
   merit. We hold that Rutila’s request was not a FOIA request until at least

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   September 11, when he described which SOPs he was requesting.1 Therefore,
   the FAA’s fee assessment on October 7 was timely, and the FAA was not
   obligated to waive fees for FOIA 9149.
                                              B.
           Rutila also challenges the determination by the FAA and district court
   that FOIA 862 and FOIA 1174 were not proper FOIA requests because they
   required the FAA to create a record. As relevant to this appeal, FOIA 862
   sought copies of “the Active Directory Account profile (all tabs) for
   Madeline Bostic” and “the NEXTGEN Toolbox profile for Madeline
   Bostic,” and FOIA 1174 sought “[a] copy of the directory or folder structure
   of Windows Explorer for all of Rick Mitchell’s network drives and ‘My
   Documents’ folders.”
           Dedra Goodman, the Manager of the FAA’s FOIA Program,
   explained in a declaration that, due to the nature of the systems and
   structures identified by Rutila’s requests, “the only way to provide the
   information” sought by FOIA 862 and FOIA 1174 “would be to take a
   screenshot of the requested data displayed on a screen.” The Active
   Directory system is “the FAA’s main directory service,” which “allows
   users to manually input their profile information, but also pulls data from
   various other sources . . . and organizes and displays that data in real time.”
   It is not a database and “not configured to enable administrative users to

           _____________________
           1
             Appellees argue that Rutila’s request did not constitute a FOIA request until
   September 16, when Rutila further specified that he was seeking “any document containing
   methods, guidance, or procedures for employees or contractors of AMA–505b related to
   conducting and/or grading evaluations” and confirmed that the maximum dollar amount he
   was willing to pay was $25 (though he also stated that he might amend this amount
   depending on the fee estimate). However, we need not decide the precise moment Rutila’s
   request qualified as a FOIA request because the FAA’s October 7 fee assessment satisfied
   the twenty-day deadline so long as Rutila’s request was not perfected before September 9.

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   export data in a usable format.” The NextGen Toolbox system “was used to
   manage mailing lists and for email password resets prior to 2014,”
   and,“[l]ike Active Directory, this system displayed data to users but was not
   set up in a way that allowed data to be exported.” The FAA does not maintain
   a record of Active Directory or NextGen Toolbox profiles, so the only way to
   produce such a record of Ms. Bostic’s profiles would have been to take a
   screenshot of the data displayed in the system. Similarly, “the FAA does not
   maintain documents that reflect an employee’s network drives, network
   directory, My Documents folder, or Windows Explorer folder structure,” so
   “the only way to capture this data would have been to take a screenshot of
   Mr. Mitchell’s folder structures.”
           Rutila acknowledges that “FOIA imposes no duty on [an] agency to
   create records,” Forsham v. Harris, 445 U.S. 169, 186 (1980); rather, “it only
   obligates [an agency] to provide access to those which it in fact has created
   and retained,” Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S.
   136, 152 (1980). He contends, however, that searching an electronic system
   and printing and releasing the records of said search does not involve the
   creation of a record.
           It is undisputed that the FAA does not maintain screenshots of
   individuals’ Active Directory Account profiles, NextGen Toolbox profiles,
   or Windows Explorer directories and folder structures.2 Therefore, for the

           _____________________
           2
             Rutila accuses the district court of failing to examine “whether screenshots were
   the only way to extract or export this information.” However, Goodman submitted that the
   only way to produce the information Rutila requested is via screenshot, and her declaration
   is entitled to a “‘presumption of legitimacy’ unless there is evidence of bad faith in
   handling the FOIA request.” Batton v. Evers, 598 F.3d 169, 176 (5th Cir. 2010) (quoting
   U.S. Dep’t of State v. Ray, 502 U.S. 164, 179 (1991)). Rutila provides no such evidence;
   therefore, we presume that screenshots are the only available method for producing the
   requested information.

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   FAA to produce the requested records, it would have to open the relevant
   software, display the requested data, and take a screenshot of the displayed
   information. A sister circuit has previously held that FOIA does not require
   an agency to undertake that process because it requires creating a new record,
   Brown v. Perez, 835 F.3d 1223, 1237 (10th Cir. 2016), and we agree. See also
   Colgan v. Dep’t of Just., No. 14-cv-740, 2020 WL 2043828, at *10 (D.D.C.
   Apr. 28, 2020) (“For the government to produce the requested screenshots,
   it would have to open the software and create a screenshot . . . . FOIA
   imposes no such duty on agencies, and the search screen is not simply
   another ‘form or format’ of an already maintained record.”).
          Relying on Schladetsch v. U.S. Department of Housing & Urban
   Development, Rutila contends that, where an agency already retains all the
   information being requested, producing a screenshot of that information does
   not constitute creating a record. No. 99-0175, 2000 WL 33372125 (D.D.C.
   Apr. 4, 2000). But that case is readily distinguishable. In Schladetsch, the
   plaintiff requested that the Department of Housing and Urban Development
   (“HUD”) compile certain historical records relating to listings of unpaid
   refunds for loans, which HUD partially denied. Id. at *1. HUD conceded that
   it retained all the information the plaintiff requested but argued that collating
   it in the isolated compilation sought by the plaintiff would require HUD to
   create a new record. Id. at *2. The district court disagreed and held that,
   “[b]ecause HUD has conceded that it possesses in its databases the discrete
   pieces of information which [the plaintiff] seeks, extracting and compiling
   that data does not amount to the creation of a new record.” Id. at *3. Here,
   by contrast, the information Rutila seeks is not maintained by the FAA in a
   database or otherwise. Producing this information would require more than
   an “electronic search of computer databases” for pre-existing records
   followed by “extract[ion] and compil[ation],” id.; it would require the FAA
   “to open the software and create a screenshot, which would not otherwise

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   exist from the last time the agency opened the software to the search screen,”
   Colgan, 2020 WL 2043828, at *10. FOIA does not obligate agencies to satisfy
   such requests.
           For similar reasons, Rutila’s reliance on ACLU Immigrants’ Rights
   Project v. U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement is misplaced. 58 F.4th 643
   (2d Cir. 2023). There, the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”)
   requested that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement
   (“ICE”) produce agency records pertaining to five stages of the immigration
   enforcement and deportation process, with anonymized unique identifiers
   for each individual or case to allow the ACLU to track individual aliens across
   the produced data.3 Id. at 646, 648. ICE produced most of the requested
   information but did not comply with the ACLU’s request to provide
   anonymized unique identifiers because it would require the creation of new
   records. Id. at 649–50. ICE acknowledged that it had the “ability to track a
   single individual across the various stages of immigration proceedings”—in
   other words, “although ICE stores immigration data by event, it can, and on
   an ad hoc basis does, access that information in a person-centric manner in
   the regular course of agency business.” Id. at 655, 658. Accordingly, the
   Second Circuit held that, in the ACLU’s urged substitution, wherein “ICE
   would query databases for datapoints by reference to meaningless”
   identifiers, “using a query to search for and extract a particular arrangement
   or subset of data already maintained in an agency’s database does not amount

           _____________________
           3
             Specifically, the ACLU requested that ICE replace Alien Identification Numbers,
   or A-Numbers, with anonymous identifiers because A-Numbers are likely exempt from
   disclosure under FOIA. See ACLU Immigrants’ Rts. Project, 58 F.4th at 648–49 & n.5.
   There was no question that ICE maintained the information requested by the ACLU; the
   only dispute was whether FOIA mandated that ICE produce the information in a manner
   that provided the ACLU the same functionality, i.e., the ability to relate records using an
   identifier linked to individual persons.

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   to the creation of a new record.” Id. at 659 (emphasis added) (quoting Ctr.
   for Investigative Reporting v. DOJ, 14 F.4th 916, 938 (9th Cir. 2021)). Rutila’s
   request is markedly different because he seeks information that Appellees do
   not actively maintain in any format. His inquiry would not merely require
   Appellees to produce information they retain and use, albeit in a slightly
   altered format; it would instead require Appellees to produce a new record—
   a screenshot—of information it does not store. Again, FOIA imposes no such
   obligations on agencies.
                                         IV.
          For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is
   AFFIRMED.

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