Court Opinion

ID: 9939939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-13 15:01:19.159419+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:42:09.109095
License: Public Domain

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
                           FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY
FOUNDATION,

              Plaintiff,

      v.                                            Civil Action No. 1:21-cv-02021 (CJN)

CENTERS FOR MEDICARE &
MEDICAID SERVICES,

              Defendant.

                                MEMORANDUM OPINION

       The only remaining question in this FOIA case is whether the government has established

that it would suffer harm from the disclosure of materials that Plaintiff concedes are covered by

the attorney-client privilege. Following briefing, argument, and the submission of an ex parte

declaration, the government has now made that showing. As a result, the Court grants summary

judgment for the government and denies Plaintiff’s corresponding cross-motion. See ECF No. 24,

ECF No. 25.

I.     Background

       Plaintiff is a “nonprofit organization” that is “currently investigating Medicaid improper

payments and [Defendant’s] recovery efforts.” ECF No. 1 ¶ 6. In 2021, it sued the Center for

Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, to compel

the agency to produce “records about CMS’s efforts, or lack thereof, to recover Medicaid improper

payments” and “records reflecting state-based data on the rates of improper payments and relevant

internal CMS correspondence.” Id.¶ 2. The only remaining dispute in this case concerns three-

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decade-old materials that contain legal analysis about CMS’s ability to take certain actions with

respect to state Medicaid disallowance liabilities. See ECF No. 24-1 at 2; ECF No. 25-1 at 1, 3.

       The government withheld these materials under FOIA’s Exemption 5, which applies to

“inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters that would not be available by law to a party

other than an agency in litigation with the agency,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5), on the grounds that the

materials are protected by the attorney-client privilege, ECF No. 24-3 ¶¶ 8–14. It also maintains

that it is reasonably foreseeable that disclosing the material would harm the interests protected by

the attorney-client privilege. ECF No. 24-1 at 1; see also 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(8)(A)(i) (an agency

may not withhold records unless it “reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest

protected by an exemption”). Plaintiff agrees that the materials are privileged but argues that the

government cannot show reasonably foreseeable harm from the disclosure of three-decade-old

materials. ECF No. 25-1 at 1. Accordingly, the Parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment

on the issue of reasonable foreseeability. ECF No. 24; ECF No. 25.

       The Court held a hearing on the motions, at which it concluded that it needed more

information to properly evaluate the government’s assertion of foreseeable harm. See Tr. at

48:2–7. Accordingly, it instructed the government to provide additional information to support its

assertions. Id. at 48:8–50:4. Importantly, the Court explicitly gave the government the option to

submit an ex parte declaration, id. at 48:15–49:3—in part because the Court was concerned that

the harms the government foresaw from disclosure might not be apparent from the face of the

documents themselves. See id. at 51:4–52:14. The government then filed an ex parte declaration,

ECF No. 37, which Plaintiff has moved to exclude from the record, ECF No. 40.

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II.    Legal Standards

       “The court shall grant summary judgment 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). “A dispute is genuine only if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return

a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Cabezas v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, No. 1:20-cv-2484 (CJN),

2023 WL 6312349, at *1 (D.D.C. Sept. 28, 2023) (quotation omitted). “An agency may attempt

to meet its summary judgment burden through a declaration or an affidavit, but conclusory

declarations or affidavits that merely recite statutory standards or are overly vague or sweeping

will not suffice.” Id. (quotation omitted). “The Court considers cross-motions for summary

judgment on an individual and separate basis, determining, for each side, whether a judgment may

be entered in accordance with the Rule 56 standard.” Doe v. District of Columbia, No. 1:19-cv-

1173 (CJN), 2023 WL 3558038, at *5 (D.D.C. Feb. 14, 2023) (quotation omitted). “In doing so,

the Court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party” and “draws all

reasonable inferences in that party’s favor.” Id. (quotation omitted and alterations adopted).

       In FOIA cases, “the receipt of in camera affidavits is, when necessary, part of a trial judge’s

procedural arsenal.” Perioperative Servs. & Logistics, LLC v. U.S. Dep’t of Veterans Affs.,

57 F.4th 1061, 1064 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (quoting Arieff v. Dep’t of the Navy, 712 F.2d 1462, 1469

(D.C. Cir. 1983)) (alteration adopted). That is because

       FOIA cases as a class present an unusual dilemma: “the government knows the
       contents of the withheld records while the plaintiff does not; and the courts have
       been charged with the responsibility of deciding the dispute without altering that
       unequal condition, since that would involve disclosing the very material sought to
       be kept secret.”

Id. at 1065 (quoting Arieff, 712 F.2d at 1471) (alterations adopted). Still, because ex parte

affidavits are “at odds with the strong presumption in favor of public access to judicial

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proceedings” and “deprive the Court of the benefit[s]” of the adversarial process, their use is

limited. Shapiro v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 239 F. Supp. 3d 100, 110–11 (D.D.C. 2017) (quotations

omitted). A district court may rely on “an ex parte affidavit if and only if ‘(1) the validity of the

government’s assertion of exemption cannot be evaluated without information beyond that

contained in the public affidavits and in the records themselves, and (2) public disclosure of that

information would compromise the secrecy asserted.’” Perioperative, 57 F.4th at 1065 (quoting

Arieff, 712 F.2d at 1471). Further, “when a district court uses [such an] affidavit, it must both

make its reasons for doing so clear and make as much as possible of the in camera submission

available to the opposing party.” Id. at 1067 (quoting Armstrong v. Executive Off. of the President,

97 F.3d 575, 580 (D.C. Cir. 1996)).

III.   Analysis

       The Court first addresses Plaintiff’s Motion to Exclude. ECF No. 40. Contrary to

Plaintiff’s assertions, id. at 4–7, all of Perioperative’s requirements for relying on an ex parte

declaration have been met here. First, “the validity of the government’s assertion of exemption

cannot be evaluated without information beyond that contained in the public affidavits and in the

records themselves.” Perioperative, 57 F.4th at 1065 (quoting Arieff, 712 F.2d at 1471). As the

Court explained at the August 9, 2023 hearing, the public record did not permit it to properly

evaluate the government’s invocation of Exemption 5. See Tr. at 48:2–7. The Court also could

not have properly evaluated the foreseeability of harm from the documents themselves. The

declaration provides critical context linking the materials at issue here to present-day concerns in

a way that would not have been apparent from reading the documents themselves—just as the

Court predicted at the hearing. See id. at 51:4–52:14. Second, “public disclosure of that

information would compromise the secrecy asserted” because the declaration needed to disclose

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the content of the materials themselves to properly articulate foreseeable harm. Perioperative,

57 F.4th at 1065 (quoting Arieff, 712 F.2d at 1471).

       The Court has also satisfied what the Plaintiff describes as the “procedural[]” requirements

for relying on the ex parte declaration. ECF No. 40 at 6. The Court has explained its “reasons”

for accepting the ex parte declaration to the greatest extent possible given the confidential nature

of the information. Perioperative, 57 F.4th at 1067 (quoting Armstrong, 97 F.3d at 580). The

Court will also make sure that “as much as possible of the in camera submission” is “available to

the opposing party.” Perioperative, 57 F.4th at 1067 (quoting Armstrong, 97 F.3d at 580). The

new information in the declaration that is material to the Court’s decision is confidential, and any

other information in the declaration is either confidential as well or already public. In an

abundance of caution, however, the Court will order the government to file a version of the

declaration on the public docket with only confidential information redacted. Finally, although

Plaintiff insists that the Court must inspect the records themselves before concluding that

Perioperative’s requirements are met, see ECF No. 40 at 7; ECF No. 42 at 2–3, the cases it cites

do not impose any such requirement, see Perioperative, 57 F.4th at 1067; Lykins v. U.S. Dep’t of

Just., 725 F.2d 1455, 1465 (D.C. Cir. 1984); Ray v. Turner, 587 F.2d 1187, 1211 n.43 (D.C. Cir.

1978). 1 The Court will therefore rely on the declaration.

       Turning to the cross-motions for summary judgment, ECF No. 24, ECF No. 25, the Parties

dedicate much of their briefs to litigating the proper standard for evaluating an agency’s attempt

1
  Plaintiff argues for the first time in reply that the entire affidavit should be unsealed because the
government did not file a motion for leave to file it under seal. ECF No. 42 at 1–3. This argument
has been forfeited because Plaintiff raised it for the first time in reply. Benton v. Laborers’ Joint
Training Fund, 121 F. Supp. 3d 41, 51 (D.D.C. 2015). Plaintiff’s passing reference to the
government’s ostensible failure to seek leave to file the affidavit under seal, see ECF No. 40 at 4
(“Setting aside [the government’s] failure to seek leave to file an ex parte declaration, . . . .”), was
not enough to preserve the argument, Trump v. Thompson, 20 F.4th 10, 46 (D.C. Cir. 2021).

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to demonstrate reasonable foreseeability in the context of the attorney-client privilege. The

government maintains that the agency’s burden is “low” in this context because the foreseeability

of harm from disclosing material protected by the attorney-client privilege is “self-evident.”

ECF No. 24-1 at 5. In contrast, Plaintiff insists that an agency cannot merely invoke the privilege

and must instead offer concrete and precise reasons that show the foreseeability of harm. ECF No.

25-1 at 5–8 (citing Reps. Comm. for Freedom of the Press v. FBI, 3 F.4th 350 (D.C. Cir. 2021)).

       The Court need not resolve this question because the government has shown reasonably

foreseeable harm even under Plaintiff’s standard. Assuming the formulation used by the Court of

Appeals in the context of the deliberative process privilege applies here, an agency must

“concretely explain how disclosure ‘would’—not ‘could’—adversely” impact the interests

protected by the attorney-client privilege. See Reps. Comm., 3 F.4th at 369–70 (quoting Machado

Amadis v. U.S. Dep’t of State, 971 F.3d 364, 371 (D.C. Cir. 2020)). That requires “a focused and

concrete demonstration of why disclosure of the particular type of material at issue will, in the

specific context of the agency action at issue, actually impede” the interests protected by the

privilege. Id. at 370.

       The government has met that burden here based on its ex parte declaration. ECF No. 37.

The confidential nature of the material permits the Court to explain why only at a high level of

generality. But the declaration does more that simply “mouth[] the generic rationale for the . . .

privilege itself.” Reps. Comm., 3 F.4th at 370. Rather, it articulates “the particular sensitivity of

the types of information at issue” here. Id. at 372. And by providing important context that links

the sensitive contents of older materials to reasonably foreseeable present-day harms, it

demonstrates “the precise damage . . . that would result from their release.” Id. at 371. The Court

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cannot say more on the public record, however, without disclosing the very information the

government seeks to protect.

IV.    Conclusion

       For the foregoing reasons, Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED,

Plaintiff’s Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment is DENIED, and Plaintiff’s Motion to Exclude

the Ex Parte Sealed Declaration is DENIED. An order will issue contemporaneously with this

opinion.

DATE: February 13, 2024
                                                       CARL J. NICHOLS
                                                       United States District Judge

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