U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, a Clinton appointee, has ruled that the Justice Department does not need to release emails Solicitor General Elena Kagan sent from her DOJ email account to people in the White House—in which she discussed her recusal decisions as solicitor general—because the emails were “used for a purely personal objective.”
CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch were seeking public release of the emails through lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The “purely personal objective” cited by the judge was Kagan’s goal of being confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. At issue is whether Kagan must recuse herself as a Supreme Court Justice when the cases challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare reach the court.
Kagan was the Obama administration’s solicitor general—charged with defending the administration’s positions in federal court cases--at the time President Obama’s health-care plan was enacted and when Virginia and Florida filed lawsuits against that health-care plan in federal court.
Internal DOJ emails that CNSNews.com did obtain via FOIA revealed that in January 2010 Kagan had personally assigned her then-top deputy, Neal Katyal, to handle the anticipated lawsuits against Obama’s health-care plan. The emails also showed that Katyal at that time believed Kagan “definitely” wanted her office involved in the administration’s defense against those legal challenges.
Katyal later signed Justice Department briefs countering lawsuits filed against Obamacare and argued some of the cases in federal court.
Under federal law—28 U.S.C. 455—any “justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be reasonably questioned.” The law further states that any justice “shall also disqualify himself … [w]here he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceedings or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.”
On May 25, 2010, CNSNews.com filed a FOIA request with the Justice Department asking for any communications to or from then-Solicitor General Kagan, or records of any meeting she personally or electronically attended, that involved any of three things: 1) discussion of pending health-care legislation, 2) any legal challenge to the health-care bill signed by President Obama, and 3) any discussion of the question of whether Kagan ought to recuse herself from involvement in any particular case in her role as solicitor general due to the prospect that it might later come before her were she confirmed to a seat on a federal court.
When the Justice Department failed to respond to CNSNews.com’s FOIA request by late November 2010, the Media Research Center (MRC), of which CNSNews.com is a division, filed suit against the department in federal court.
In a subsquent search of Kagan’s email files pursuant to CNSNews.com's FOIA request, the Justice Department found 8 documents that represented a chain of emails that had gone back and forth between Kagan and officials at the White House on May 17, 2010—a week after Obama had nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court.
In addition to Kagan herself, parties to the email chain included, among others, White House Counsel Robert Bauer; Ronald Klain, Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff; and Joshua Earnest, a White House spokesman.
“These documents consist of an email exchange between Kagan, in her capacity as a nominee to the United States Supreme Court, and staff members of the Executive Office of the President,” the Justice Department said in a “Vaughn Index” it submitted to the federal court listing documents it was declining to release in response to CNSNews.com’s FOIA.
“The email exchange concerns drafting and revising a proposed answer Kagan might give to a possible question she might be asked, during the Senate confirmation process, about recusal decisions as Solicitor General,” the Justice Department told the court. “A review of the hearing record of Ms. Kagan’s confirmation by the U.S. Senate reveals that the question at issue in this email exchange was never asked or answered.”
The Justice Department argued that it did not have to release these emails because they were not “agency documents” but “personal” ones.
“The emails at issue here do not concern the ‘official duties’ of the OSG, but rather concern then-Solicitor General Kagan’s nomination to fill a seat on the United States Supreme Court,” the Justice Department told the court.
“Further,” the Justice Department said, “contrary to plaintiff MRC’s suggestion, emails SG Kagan sent or received concerning her nomination were not ‘created by the OSG’ but rather sent or received by SG Kagan in her personal capacity as a nominee to the Supreme Court rather as opposed to her official capacity as Solicitor General.”
Judge Huvelle agreed with the Justice Department that Solicitor General Kagan’s emails to the White House “about recusal decisions as Solicitor General”—as DOJ had described the emails—were indeed personal and not governmental.
“However,” Judge Huvelle wrote in an opinion issued Thursday, “S.G. Kagan’s correspondence was not relied upon by the OSG in carrying out its business, but rather was used for a purely personal objective … As such, the relevant factors compel the conclusion that the withheld documents were personal, not attributable to the agency, and therefore were not ‘agency records.’”
Read more on Kagan and the MRC lawsuit at CNSNews.com.
