ACLU v. USDOJ, No. 14-17339 (9th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseThe DOJ appealed the district court's order requiring the agency to produce two documents contained within the USABook, an internal DOJ resource manual for federal prosecutors, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, request. The DOJ explained that the documents, which relate to the DOJ's use of electronic surveillance and tracking devices in criminal investigations, were exempt from production. The Ninth Circuit held that only the the limited portions of the USABook documents that present original legal analyses, not purely descriptive and not already incorporated in public documents, to guide federal prosecutors in litigation, were properly withheld as attorney work product under Exemption 5; the withheld documents in this case did not provide details or means of deploying law enforcement techniques that would bring them under FOIA Exemption 7(E); and thus the panel remanded to the district court to determine which portions of the documents could be segregated under Exemption 5 and which must be disclosed.
Court Description: Freedom of Information Act. The panel affirmed in part, and reversed in part, the district court’s order that the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) produce two documents contained within the USABook, an internal DOJ resource manual for federal prosecutors, in response to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California’s Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request. The requested documents related to DOJ’s use of electronic surveillance and tracking devices in criminal investigations. DOJ maintained that the USABook sections were exempt from production under FOIA because they were attorney work product, and, alternatively, because they described law enforcement techniques and procedures. The panel held that only the limited portions of the USABook documents that present original legal analyses, not purely descriptive and not already incorporated in public documents, to guide federal prosecutors in litigation were properly withheld as attorney work product under FOIA Exemption 5. The panel also held that the withheld documents in this case did not provide details or means of deploying law enforcement techniques that would bring them under FOIA Exemption 7(E). The panel remanded to the district court to determine which portions of the documents ACLU V. USDOJ 3 may be segregated under Exemption 5 and which must be disclosed.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.