Court Opinion

ID: 9473186
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:22:12.54934+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:22.557123
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Chief Judge
(concurring and dissenting).
I fully concur except in the decision to remand on the issue of the potential seg-regability of material listed in our footnote 4. I would affirm in full.
This is, to be sure, a close call, and I fully respect my colleagues’ reasoning. And there is little harm done — the court makes it clear that if the government can convince the district court that portions listed in footnote 4 are exempt, disclosure need not be ordered. The court also limits the kind of ultra-sharp scrutiny required here to cases involving very short records — presumably to records not much longer than this one.
I worry, however, that this case will be read as requiring busy district judges to be unrealistically scrupulous about nit-picking records and ordering disclosure of isolated fragments that, standing alone, have little import. Especially with respect to reports of criminal investigation involving rather compelling reasons for nondisclosure, I think the district judge must have some practical leeway. It seems to me that the district judge’s finding that there was left no reasonably segregable portion of the record after deletion of the exempt portions was not clearly erroneous and should be upheld.