Ctr. to Advance Sec. in Am. v. USAID, No. 24-3505, 2025 WL 763735 (D.D.C. Mar. 11, 2025) (Moss, J.)

Ctr. to Advance Sec. in Am. v. USAID, No. 24-3505, 2025 WL 763735 (D.D.C. Mar. 11, 2025) (Moss, J.)

Re:  Request for various records of certain individuals

Disposition:  Granting defendant’s motion to stay

• Procedural Requirements, Expedited Processing:  The court relates “[n]otwithstanding [the] statutory focus on expedition, Defendant U.S. Agency for International Development (‘USAID’) asks the Court to stay this case and to vacate the initial status hearing.” “According to USAID, this extraordinary relief is necessary ‘due to USAID’s recent announcement about staffing.’” “According to . . . USAID’s FOIA Public Liaison, ‘the number of remaining USAID personnel available to work on Freedom of Information Act . . . matters is extremely limited.’”  “[Defendant] estimates that ‘USAID’s FOIA staffing has been reduced by half,’ with ‘all but three direct hire FOIA staff [ ] either [ ] terminated or placed on administrative leave’ and ‘only nine institutional support contractors’ to assist them.”  “According to [defendant], that reduction in staffing has ‘severely constrained’ USAID’s ability to process FOIA requests.”  “Although USAID cites no authority in support of its request, the D.C. Circuit has recognized that FOIA permits exceptions to these time limits in ‘unusual’ or ‘exceptional circumstances.’”  “As relevant here, once a FOIA case is brought in federal district court, ‘the court may retain jurisdiction and allow the agency additional time to complete its review of the records,’ but only ‘[i]f the Government can show exceptional circumstances exist and that the agency is exercising due diligence in responding to the request.’”  “This exception provides a ‘safety valve’ for when ‘the rigid limits’ imposed by the statute ‘prove unworkable,’ and it applies ‘when an agency . . . is deluged with a volume of requests for information vastly in excess of that anticipated by Congress, when the existing resources are inadequate to deal with the volume of such requests within the time limits [imposed by the statute], and when the agency can show that it “is exercising due diligence” in processing the requests.’”  “The safety valve is not available, however, for ‘delay[s] that results from a predictable agency workload of [FOIA] requests.’”
  
  “In the present context, the Court is skeptical that an agency can avoid its obligations under FOIA – including the obligation to process a request in an efficient and prompt manner – by simply implementing a reduction-in-force that ‘either [ ] terminate[s] or place[s] on administrative leave’ ‘all but three direct hire FOIA staff’ and, more generally, by reducing the agency’s overall FOIA staff ‘by half[]’ . . . .”  “Here, moreover, the agency does not point to any external impediments to meeting the statutory requirements, such as a lack of funding from Congress or an unanticipated volume of requests that has overwhelmed the FOIA office.”  “FOIA’s demand for expedition – and, indeed, more generally, FOIA’s requirement that agencies release all non-exempt, responsive records – would be rendered meaningless if an agency could avoid these statutory obligations through the simple expedient of dismissing its FOIA staff.”
  
  “Here, however, Plaintiff . . . does not object to USAID’s request for a stay.”  “The Court will, accordingly, grant the stay – but only because it is unopposed.” “The Court cautions that this decision should not be understood to forecast how the Court is likely to resolve an opposed request for a stay under similar circumstances or a request by Plaintiff to lift the stay in this matter.”