Whitehead v. Buttigieg
- Laura Swain
- 1:21-cv-08669
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
Whitehead v. Buttigieg: Judge Swain transferred the action to Western Louisiana and denied Whitehead’s motions.
David Louis Whitehead’s action was transferred from the Southern District of New York to the Western District of Louisiana; the defendants and the proceedings were affected by that transfer.
What happened
In Whitehead v. Buttigieg, David Louis Whitehead, representing himself, sued under the Freedom of Information Act and brought federal and state claims about an alleged tweet by Pete Buttigieg. Whitehead said he lived in Bossier, Louisiana, requested records from the Department of Transportation, and had not received the documents.
The court found that the Western District of Louisiana was a proper venue because Whitehead lived in Louisiana and his other claims concerned events affecting his employment at Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana. The court transferred the action there rather than deciding the underlying claims.
Judge Swain denied Whitehead’s motions to withdraw his interlocutory appeal, serve process by email, transfer the case to Indiana, and reconsider the denial of injunctive relief and partial summary judgment. The court closed the case in the Southern District of New York and denied permission to appeal without paying fees.
The detailed version
- Whitehead v. Buttigieg · No. 1:21-cv-08669
- Laura Swain
- Jan. 31, 2022
Background
David Louis Whitehead, who was representing himself, brought an action under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a federal law governing access to agency records. He also asserted federal and state-law claims concerning an alleged October 2020 tweet by Pete Buttigieg. Whitehead paid the filing fees. He alleged that he resided in Bossier, Louisiana, requested records from the Department of Transportation on August 25, 2021, and had not received the requested documents. The complaint included a Department of Transportation letter acknowledging receipt of the request.
Venue and Transfer
FOIA allows a records-access claim to be filed where the complainant resides, where the complainant has a principal place of business, where the agency records are located, or in the District of Columbia. The court stated that Whitehead did not reside in a county within the Southern District of New York and that the location of the agency records was unclear. It therefore concluded that the district where Whitehead resided was a proper venue for the FOIA claim.
The court also found that Whitehead’s federal and state claims concerning the alleged tweet were properly venued in the Western District of Louisiana because the events concerned Grambling, Louisiana, including Whitehead’s employment at Grambling State University. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a), which allows a federal court to transfer a case filed in an improper venue when that serves the interests of justice, the court transferred the action to the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Other Motions and Disposition
The court denied Whitehead’s motion to withdraw his interlocutory appeal, without prejudice to filing that motion in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. It denied his motion to allow service of process by email because the action was being transferred. It denied his motion to transfer the action to a district court in Indiana because the court concluded that the Western District of Louisiana was a proper venue. It also denied his motion to reconsider the denial of injunctive relief and his request for partial summary judgment because the action was being transferred.
The court’s conclusion states that it transferred the action to the Western District of Louisiana and denied Whitehead’s motions filed at ECF 12–14 because of the transfer. It directed the clerk to terminate all motions and stated that the order closed the case in the Southern District of New York. The court also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees. The opinion does not decide the merits of Whitehead’s FOIA, federal, or state-law claims.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.