UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA _________________________________________ ) CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBILITY ) AND ETHICS IN WASHINGTON et al., ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) v. ) Case No. 20-cv-00739 (APM) ) NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ) ADMINISTRATION et al., ) ) Defendants. ) _________________________________________ ) MEMORANDUM OPINION I. INTRODUCTION In December 2019, the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) approved a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) to schedule the disposal of certain agency records for which ICE no longer had a business use. Plaintiffs have challenged NARA’s approval of that request as arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law. The parties have cross-moved for summary judgment. For the reasons that follow, the court grants in part and denies in part each motion. II. BACKGROUND A. Legal Background The Federal Records Act provides the legal framework for the collection, preservation, and disposal of records produced by the federal government. As relevant here, the Act requires that federal agencies “make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency . . . to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities.” 44 U.S.C. § 3101. The Federal Records Act entrusts the Archivist, who is the head of NARA, to provide “guidance and assistance to Federal agencies” to ensure that such federal records are properly preserved. See id. § 2904(a). The Archivist works cooperatively with federal agencies to determine which records an agency must preserve in the archives and which records may be segregated and disposed because of their “temporary value.” See id. § 3102(3). Agency heads request “disposition authority”— permission to discard records—from the Archivist and submit to the Archivist plans to dispose of records that are no longer “needed by [the agency] in the transaction of its current business and that do not appear to have sufficient administrative, legal, research, or other value to warrant their further preservation.” Id. § 3303(2). These plans can include “schedules proposing the disposal” of records that lose their “administrative, legal, research, or other value” over time and do not qualify for permanent retention. Id. § 3303(3). The Archivist “examine[s] the lists and schedules” and, following a public notice and comment period, determines if any of the records “have sufficient, administrative, legal, research, or other value to warrant their continued preservation.” Id. § 3303a(a). Pursuant to its statutory authority to “establish standards for the selective retention of records of continuing value,” id. § 2905(a), NARA has promulgated an “Appraisal Policy” that “sets out the strategic framework, objectives, and guidelines that [it] uses to determine whether Federal records have archival value.” Nat’l Archives & Records Admin., Appraisal Policy of the National Archives § 1 (Sept. 2007), https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/scheduling/ appraisal#policy [hereinafter Appraisal Policy]. As the Appraisal Policy states: “Records appraisal is not a rote exercise. It requires informed judgments, knowledge of and sensitivity to 2 researchers’ interests, recognition …
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