Pickering v. DOJ (W.D.N.Y.) -- ruling on disputed portions of magistrate judge’s report and recommendations that: (1) magistrate did not err in finding that ATF failed establish that voices on audiotapes were not reasonably segregable; ordering agency to explain in a sworn declaration what happened to 16 tapes that ATF now claims are missing and two that were destroyed; (2) because FBI did not withhold handwritten notes pursuant to Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege, magistrate erred in granting summary judgment to plaintiff on this ground; (3) FBI’s failure to identify which pages of 14,000 withheld pages fell within Exemption 7(A), combined with the FBI’s “exceedingly vague and amorphous characterization of any prospective law enforcement proceeding,” made it “impossible” for the court to assess the FBI exemption claim; and (4) magistrate did not err in finding that ATF’s justification for its use of Exemption 7(F) lacked reasonable specificity.
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