Intercept Media Inc. v. Nat’l Park Serv., No. 23-10922, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 210164 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 18, 2024) (Engelmayer, J.)

Intercept Media Inc. v. Nat’l Park Serv., No. 23-10922, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 210164 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 18, 2024) (Engelmayer, J.)

Re: Request for investigative file concerning January 2022 killing of a gray wolf near northern boundary of Yellowstone National Park

Disposition:  Ordering in camera inspection

• Litigation Consideration, In Camera Inspection:  “Having reviewed the parties’ pleadings and submissions, the Court’s judgment is that its ex parte, in camera inspection of the single record at issue – the investigative file – is warranted to enable the Court fully to resolve whether the [the National Park Service’s (“NPS”)] withholdings are permissible under Exemptions 6 and 7(C).” The court finds that “[plaintiff] has raised colorable arguments that the NPS has withheld information (1) without adequately justifying its non-disclosure, and (2) without sufficiently explaining why any unprotected information is not reasonably segregable from information that is exempted from the agency’s otherwise broad duty of disclosure.” “Although the NPS – at the Court’s direction-has submitted a Vaughn index, . . . the agency’s generalized assertions therein do not enable the Court meaningfully to assess [plaintiff’s] claims that the NPS’s redactions are unjustified by the privacy interests it cites and/or overbroad.”  “The Vaughn index does not permit the Court to assess, for example, why the privacy interests of the witnesses interviewed in connection with the investigation would not be sufficiently protected by redacting their names and any identifying elements, rather than withholding en masse all factual information elicited from them, as the NPS appears to have done.”  “Accordingly, the Court itself will inspect the withheld portions of the investigative file.”