Alford v. McDonough, No. 20-02805, 2024 WL 3673311 (D.D.C. Aug. 2, 2024) (Reyes, J.)

Alford v. McDonough, No. 20-02805, 2024 WL 3673311 (D.D.C. Aug. 2, 2024) (Reyes, J.)

Re:  Request for certain records concerning plaintiff

Disposition:  Granting in part and denying in part defendant’s motion for summary judgment; denying plaintiff’s motion to stay

• Litigation Considerations, Adequacy of Search; Procedural Requirements, Searching for Responsive Records:  “Although the Court does not agree with all of Plaintiff's arguments, he has explained at least some inadequacies with the VA’s search.”  “The Court will order the VA to supplement its search and supporting documentation before the VA refiles another motion for summary judgment.”  “First, the plain text of Plaintiff’s FOIA requests seeks other forms of electronic records besides just emails.”  “His May 26, 2020 request seeks ‘any and all electronic communications,’ and his September 8, 2021 request seeks ‘any emails, electronic records, or memos.’”  “But the VA searched only ‘18 employee custodians’ emails located on the Microsoft Exchange Server.’”  “Second, the VA has not justified the use of the request dates – May 26, 2020, and September 8, 2021 – as search cut-off dates.”  “As the VA acknowledges, the D.C. Circuit has rejected the position that the ‘use of a time-of-request cut-off date is always reasonable’ and explained that an agency must provide a ‘compelling justification for imposing a date-of-request cut-off on a particular FOIA request.’”  “The VA argues that it does not need a ‘compelling justification’ here because ‘Plaintiff conveyed his own date preferences’ and ‘chose his own relevant dates.’”  “The Court disagrees.”  “Although Plaintiff imposed some date limitations, he did not impose the dates the VA used.”  “As for Plaintiff’s remaining arguments, the initial scope of the searches based on the offices most likely to have responsive records and the eighteen custodians identified appear to be reasonable search parameters.”
   
• Exemption 6:  The court relates that “[t]he VA redacted names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and other PII for non-Senior Executive Service VA employees.”  “The Court agrees with the VA that, in the context of this case, it properly redacted PII of non-Senior Executive Service employees under Exemption 6 and grants the VA summary judgment on this issue.”  First, the court finds that “[t]he names, phone numbers, email addresses, and other contact information are ‘similar files’ under Exemption 6 because they are ‘bits of personal information . . . the release of which would create a palpable threat to privacy.’”  Second, the court finds that “in this context, the disclosure of the redacted information ‘would compromise a substantial . . . privacy interest[’] . . . .”  “[Defendant] notes that ‘low-level employees have a privacy interest to be free to perform their duties without being subject to harassing correspondence.’”  Finally, the court finds that “Plaintiff has articulated no public interest that would outweigh the privacy interest of redacting PII from career VA employees.”  “Disclosing the redacted PII would not help explain ‘the operations or activities’ of the VA.”  “And ‘[i]f there is no public interest in the disclosure of certain information, something, even a modest privacy interest, outweighs nothing every time.’”  “In this case, any ‘need’ by Plaintiff ‘to obtain the information for a pending civil suit is irrelevant, as the public interest to be weighed has nothing to do with [Plaintiff’s] personal situation.’”