MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER Before the Court is an objection (Docket Entry No. 293) (the “Objection”), filed by Shauna Noel and Emmanuella Senat (collectively “Plaintiffs”) pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72(a), to an opinion and order entered by Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker on February 1, 2018, Winfield v. City of New York, No. 15-cv-05236, 2018 WL 716013 (the “February 2018 Order”), ruling that the City of New York (“Defendant” or the “City”) could claw back and withhold, in substantial part, on deliberative process privilege grounds a previously disclosed document (the “Clawback Document”), and upholding Defendant’s deliberative process, attorney-client, legislative and/or work product privilege claims, at least in part, as to 12 documents and four deposition questions (together with the Clawback Document, the “Disputed Materials”). After considering carefully the submissions of both parties, the Court sustains Plaintiffs’ objections, in part, sets the February 2018 Order aside insofar as it addresses the deliberative process privilege and returns the matters to the Magistrate Judge for further proceedings consistent with this Memorandum Opinion and Order.BACKGROUNDFamiliarity with the factual context of the underlying case, of which the Court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sections 1331 and 1343 and 42 U.S.C. section 3613(a), is presumed.In the underlying case, Plaintiffs claim Defendant has discriminated against them in violation of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §3604, and the New York City Human Rights Law, NYC Admin. Code §8-107, through its Community Preference Policy of allocating “50 percent of units in affordable housing lotteries to individuals who already reside in the community district where the new affordable housing units are being built.” Winfield v. City of New York, No. 15-CV-05236-LTS-KHP, 2017 WL 2880556, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. July 5, 2017), objections overruled, No. 15 CV 5236-LTS-KHP, 2017 WL 5054727 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 2, 2017).“During a conference on June 5, 2017, Plaintiffs’ counsel handed up…several documents that the City had produced in discovery in redacted form, including [the Clawback Document, which is] a presentation Bates-stamped 21052-21089 entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: A Preliminary Guide to NYC’s Submission.’ As the title suggests, the presentation is a preliminary overview of the City’s prospective submission in response to [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's ('HUD')] new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (‘AFFH’) rule which requires HUD program participants, such as New York City, to submit an Assessment of Fair Housing (‘AFH’) in 2019. Upon reviewing the presentation, counsel for the City indicated that she believed the document should have been withheld in its entirety on privilege grounds and that it had been inadvertently produced.” February 2018 Order, 2018 WL 716013, at *2. Plaintiffs argue that the Clawback Document provides circumstantial evidence that the Community Preference Policy is motivated by discriminatory intent because it contains acknowledgements by Defendant that members of the public opposed unspecified city housing policies. Plaintiffs assert that such opposition is based on a desire to maintain the current racial status quo in certain neighborhoods, and that Defendant implemented the Community Preference Policy as a knowing accommodation of such opposition.In response to Plaintiffs’ repeated assertions that Defendant had over-designated other responsive documents as confidential, the Magistrate Judge directed Defendant, at a July 21, 2017, conference, to identify 80 documents from its privilege log for her further review. Id. at *3. The City responded to the direction by confining its privilege claims to 27 documents. Id.Plaintiffs deposed Carl Weisbrod, the former Chairman of the City Planning Commission and Director of the New York City Department of City Planning and Vicki Been, the former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, on July 27, 2017, and August 2, 2017, respectively. Id. at *1, 3. Defendant’s counsel asserted the deliberative process privilege and directed Been and Weisbrod not to respond to 20 questions. Id. at *3. By letter dated September 1, 2017 (Docket Entry No. 177), Plaintiffs requested privilege rulings from the court on these 20 questions, and Defendant then withdrew its objections to six of Plaintiffs’ questions. Id.In her February 2018 Order, the Magistrate Judge overruled Plaintiffs’ objection to Defendant’s privilege assertion as to the Clawback Document and also overruled Plaintiffs’ objections to Defendant’s privilege claims as to all but 12 of the remaining 27 documents (the objections to four of these 12 documents were sustained only in part). See generally id. Twelve of Defendant’s remaining 14 privilege-based objections to Plaintiff’s deposition questions were sustained in whole or in part. Id. at *18-21.Plaintiffs object to the Magistrate Judge’s determination that the deliberative process privilege protects 12 of the documents that the court allowed the City to withhold, bearing Bates numbers 56994 and NYCPRIV 00017, 00218, 00242, 00393, 00399, 00548, 00726, 00885, 01023, 01156, and 01648, and the information sought by the deposition questions denominated as Been Nos. 4, 5, 9, and 10. (Objection
