## Facts

- Utah participated in the federal Food Stamp Program, under which states administer benefits but face sanctions if quality-control error-rate goals are not met.
- The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) assessed Utah a quality-control error-rate penalty for fiscal year 1983 and granted only a partial good-cause waiver.
- Utah sought administrative review before the USDA’s State Food Stamp Appeals Board; the Board directed FNS to produce documents but lacked power to compel production as a court could.
- Covington & Burling, representing Utah in the administrative proceeding, submitted a FOIA request to FNS seeking 108 documents relating to the penalty determination and waiver.
- FNS produced some records in full, others with redactions, and withheld 11 documents in full, primarily invoking FOIA Exemption 5 (deliberative process, attorney-client privilege, and work product).
- Covington & Burling filed suit alleging an inadequate FOIA search and unlawful withholding/redaction.

## Issues

1. Whether FNS conducted a search reasonably calculated to uncover responsive records.
2. Whether FNS properly withheld documents or portions under FOIA Exemption 5 based on the deliberative process privilege, attorney-client privilege, and work-product doctrine.
3. Whether FNS satisfied FOIA’s segregability requirement by releasing any reasonably segregable nonexempt factual material.

## Decision

- The court largely granted summary judgment to FNS and largely denied Covington & Burling’s motion.
- The court found FNS’s search generally adequate under FOIA’s reasonableness standard, while requiring limited additional clarification or inquiry in discrete respects.
- The court upheld most Exemption 5 withholdings and redactions where the records were predecisional and deliberative or protected by attorney-client or work-product privilege.
- The court required limited additional justification and/or segregability review where the agency’s submissions did not sufficiently show that nonexempt factual material could not be reasonably segregated.

## Legal Principles

- A FOIA search is sufficient if it is reasonably calculated to uncover relevant records; the adequacy of the search turns on the reasonableness of the agency’s methods, not whether additional records might exist.
- Agency affidavits describing search scope and methods are entitled to a presumption of good faith absent evidence to the contrary.
- FOIA Exemption 5 protects inter- and intra-agency materials that would be privileged in civil discovery, including:
  - predecisional, deliberative communications reflecting recommendations, opinions, or analyses used in agency decisionmaking;
  - attorney-client communications seeking or providing legal advice; and
  - attorney work product prepared in anticipation of adversarial proceedings.
- FOIA requires disclosure of any reasonably segregable nonexempt portions; however, factual material may be withheld when it is so intertwined with deliberative content that disclosure would reveal protected deliberations.
- A requester’s litigation interest in the documents does not override valid FOIA exemptions because FOIA is a public disclosure statute rather than case-specific discovery.

## Conclusion

The court upheld FNS’s reliance on FOIA Exemption 5 for most disputed records related to Utah’s food stamp penalty and found the agency’s search generally adequate, but ordered limited additional search clarification and segregability support where the agency had not sufficiently demonstrated that nonexempt factual material could not be disclosed.


Covington & Burling v. Food & Nutrition Serv., 744 F. Supp. 314 (D.D.C. 1990)