Plaintiff Michael Hagar, proceeding pro se, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI seeking an email he had sent in 2016. The email contained threats and profanities and was central to his criminal case. Hagar requested the full email body along with unredacted recipient names in the 'To' line and the complete 'header information,' which includes technical metadata about the email's path through servers. The FBI initially released the email body but redacted the recipient names and refused to provide the header information, arguing that doing so would require creating a new record. After the district court granted summary judgment for the FBI, the agency subsequently provided the unredacted email to Hagar. Hagar appealed, challenging the summary judgment, the denial of his post-judgment motions, and alleging judicial misconduct.
The Fifth Circuit addressed the appeal in two primary parts. First, regarding the redacted recipient names, the court found the claim moot. The court noted that while the FBI's motion was pending, it provided Hagar with the unredacted email containing the previously withheld 'To' line information. Citing precedent, the court held that once a record is turned over, a FOIA claim for that record is moot. Second, regarding the header information, the court affirmed the district court's ruling that the FBI was not required to produce it. The court relied on the principle that FOIA does not obligate agencies to create new records. The FBI explained that the header information was dynamic and not plainly visible in the email body; producing it would require an employee to copy and paste the data into a separate text file. The court compared this to a prior Fifth Circuit decision, Rutila v. United States Department of Transportation, where taking a screenshot to display data not stored separately was deemed the creation of a new record. The court concluded that copying the header information into a new document similarly required the creation of a new record, which FOIA does not mandate. Finally, the court dismissed Hagar's claims of judicial misconduct, stating that judicial rulings alone do not constitute bias or partiality and that Hagar provided no evidence of extrajudicial prejudice.
The decision reinforces the 'no-creation' rule in FOIA litigation, clarifying that agencies need not generate new documents or formats to satisfy requests for dynamic data like email headers. It also establishes that a FOIA plaintiff's claim for specific redacted information is moot if the agency provides that information after the summary judgment motion is filed but before the appeal is decided. The case is remanded with instructions to dismiss the moot claims and the judgment is affirmed.
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