American Immigration Lawyers Ass'n v. Executive Office for Immigration Review
830 F.3d 667, 424 U.S. App. D.C. 407, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 13800 (2016)
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Rule of Law:
Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), an agency cannot apply a categorical rule to redact information under Exemption 6 without a particularized balancing of interests. Furthermore, once an agency identifies a record as responsive to a request, it cannot redact portions of that record as 'non-responsive' unless the information falls within a specific statutory exemption.
Facts:
- Immigration judges are career civil-service employees within the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).
- In 2006, following public concerns about the conduct of some immigration judges, the Attorney General initiated a review and ordered new procedures for handling complaints.
- In May 2010, the Department of Justice implemented a new, formal database system to receive, track, and resolve complaints of misconduct against immigration judges.
- The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), citing ongoing concerns about judicial conduct and the complaint process's efficacy, submitted a FOIA request in November 2012 to the Department of Justice.
- AILA's request sought access to all complaints filed against immigration judges, records detailing the resolution of those complaints, and the reasoning behind the resolutions.
Procedural Posture:
- After its FOIA request went unanswered for over six months, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) sued the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the release of records.
- In response, EOIR produced approximately 16,000 pages of documents but made two types of redactions at issue: it redacted all immigration judges' names under FOIA Exemption 6 and also redacted other information it deemed 'non-responsive' even though it was within responsive records.
- AILA challenged both categories of redactions in the district court, which granted summary judgment to EOIR, upholding all redactions.
- AILA, as appellant, appealed the district court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with EOIR as the appellee.
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Issue:
Under the Freedom of Information Act, may a government agency 1) apply a categorical rule to redact all immigration judges’ names from complaint files under Exemption 6, and 2) redact information from a responsive record on the grounds that the specific information is non-responsive, even if it is not covered by a statutory exemption?
Opinions:
Majority - Srinivasan
No. A government agency may not categorically redact judges' names under Exemption 6, nor may it redact non-exempt information from a responsive record on the basis of non-responsiveness. First, the application of FOIA's Exemption 6 requires balancing the public interest in disclosure against an individual's privacy interest. This balance is not uniform for every judge in every situation; it varies based on factors like the judge's current status (sitting or retired) and the seriousness or frequency of complaints. The agency's across-the-board redaction of all names failed to conduct this necessary particularized analysis for individuals or defined subgroups. Second, FOIA's statutory scheme is exclusive. Once an agency identifies a 'record' as responsive, it must disclose the entire record as a unit, redacting only those portions that are specifically protected by one of the nine statutory exemptions. The statute provides no authority for an agency to parse a responsive record and redact non-exempt information simply because it deems that specific information 'non-responsive.'
Analysis:
This decision significantly clarifies two key procedural limitations on agency withholdings under FOIA. First, it curtails the government's ability to use broad, categorical justifications for privacy redactions under Exemption 6, forcing a more granular, context-specific analysis that is likely to lead to greater disclosure of information about public employee misconduct. Second, and more importantly, it establishes a bright-line rule in the D.C. Circuit that an agency cannot redact 'non-responsive' information from a document it has already identified as responsive. This prevents agencies from selectively editing responsive records and reinforces the principle that only specific statutory exemptions—not an agency's judgment of relevance—can justify withholding information from a responsive document.
