Glines v. DOD, No. 24-1222, 2025 WL 1207085 (D.D.C. Apr. 25, 2025) (Chutkan, J.)

Glines v. DOD, No. 24-1222, 2025 WL 1207085 (D.D.C. Apr. 25, 2025) (Chutkan, J.)

Re: Requests for records concerning plaintiff

Disposition:  Denying plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction

• Litigation Considerations, Preliminary Injunctions:  The court relates that “Plaintiff argues that the Navy ‘failed to answer’ her March 19, 2024, request to expedite within the 10-day deadline.”  The court finds that “[t]he Navy responded on May 28, 2024 – months later.”  “According to the Navy’s declarant, its delay was due to a technology transfer.”  “That suffices to rebut the presumption here.” “To the extent that Plaintiff also challenges whether the Navy improperly denied her request for expedited treatment, the court finds that she is also unlikely to succeed on the merits of that claim as well.”  “The Navy explained in its denial that Plaintiff ‘did not [ ] articulate how, specifically, a lack of expedited processing would result in a loss of her due process rights.’”  “It went on to note that ‘[c]ourts have determined that employees have no right to a security clearance.’”  “Therefore, it found ‘no basis to provide an expedited response on a theory that [Plaintiff] faces an imminent loss of due process rights.’”  “The court finds that the Navy’s explanation was ‘reasoned.’”
  
  Regarding the same type of challenge to the request submitted to the DOD, the court finds that “even if the Department had been tardy in responding to the request for expedited treatment, that still would not weigh in Plaintiff’s favor.”  “The ‘penalty’ for failing to meet FOIA’s 10-business day timeline is not the imposition of another explicit timeline, but rather ‘that the agency cannot rely on the administrative exhaustion requirement to keep cases from getting into court.’”  “Given the Department’s unrebutted representations that they continue to actively process Plaintiff’s other requests, reviewing potentially responsive records of 3,000 or more pages, . . . the court finds that Plaintiff has not established a likelihood of success on this claim.”  “Plaintiff’s challenge to the redacted Report of Investigation that the Department produced to her is also unlikely to succeed on the merits.” “Plaintiff cannot bypass the ‘oft-protracted’ FOIA process, in which the Department must justify its redactions in the normal course.”  “To the extent Plaintiff seeks to know why certain portions were redacted, that explanation is typically provided in a Vaughn index filed in conjunction with a summary judgment motion.”  “No reason exists here, and the Plaintiff articulates none, to avert the normal FOIA process, and ‘require [the Department] to create an index and declaration justifying its decision to withhold certain documents until the agency has completed processing [Plaintiff’s] FOIA request and the parties have had an opportunity to negotiate regarding any documents that are withheld.’”