II. Unduly Burdensome or Voluminous

Even if you have “identified…with great specificity” the documents you seek, an agency may still deny the request if searching for the documents would be unduly burdensome.¹⁸ If you seek a very large number of documents, the court will examine the “reasonableness” of the search based on the volume of documents that must be searched to identify responsive records.¹⁹

Examples of unduly burdensome searches include: “a page-by-page search through the 84,000 cubic feet of documents in the [CIA] records center,”²⁰ a “search through every file in [the IRS’] possession to see if a reference to Scientology appeared,”²¹ and a search of “3,500,000 files of patents,” as well as “well over a million of abandoned patent applications.”²²

However, even where a great number of files must be searched, a request is less likely to be considered unduly burdensome if a search would be “likely to reveal the information requested.”²³ For example, a request for a 1981 memo that required a search through 23 years of files kept by the United States Customs Service was not considered unreasonable where the files were indexed chronologically.²⁴

In appealing a response that your request is unduly burdensome response, you should argue that the agency has overestimated the volume of documents that must be searched. You should also argue that search methodologies exist that are likely to result in success, or that the documents will not be as difficult to find as is claimed by the agency. In addition, as described above, you should narrow the scope of your request where possible; once a request has been narrowed, it will be more difficult for an agency to claim that it is too burdensome for it to undertake.