Mar. 16, 2026
Heritage Found. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning, in relevant part, “300,382 potentially responsive pages” of records, denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and granting in part the requester’s cross-motion; rejecting the agency’s argument that it not process the potentially responsive material because the request at issue was “unreasonably described”; explaining “the request was clear enough for the Department to locate responsive documents from some of its offices without issue”; rejecting also the agency’s claim that processing would be unduly burdensome, and noting the fact “a FOIA request implicates a large quantity of documents is insufficient, on its own, to establish that [processing] is unduly burdensome”; concluding the government failed to offer any “good reason why further search term filtering and removal of false positives cannot significantly reduce the burden of the search”; noting with approval the requester’s argument that the agency failed “to reasonably refine its searches,” such as by using “connector search terms,” or making use of “an eDiscovery tool”; ordering the agency to review a sample of the pages at issue, propose exclusionary search terms, negotiate with the requester, and run another search.
Mar. 18, 2026
Judicial Watch v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a consolidated case involving requests from Judicial Watch, the Heritage Foundation, and various press outlets for access to audio recordings of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, denying Heritage’s motion to strike a government declaration and for leave to engage in discovery vis-a-vis the parties’ dispute over plaintiffs’ eligibility for attorney’s fees; with respect to the motion to strike the government declaration filed in opposition to a fee motion, concluding Heritage’s motion “is procedurally improper” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) and, in any case, unsupported by “sufficient basis”; rejecting also Heritage’s motion for discovery; noting how “neither party is aware of any case granting discovery in a FOIA fee dispute”; explaining moreover that Heritage failed to demonstrate bad faith, either in arguing that the declarant lacked requisite personal knowledge and relied on hearsay, or by challenging the veracity of specific factual claims; noting, in closing, that Heritage’s “specific requests for discovery are deficient.”
Judicial Watch v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in the same case as above, setting out a magistrate’s recommendation that the district court deny the parties’ motions for attorney’s fees under the “catalyst theory”; on the question of eligibility, concluding the Heritage Foundation “established only that it substantially caused the release of the second recording of the Biden-Hur Interview, but not the first recording,” and that CNN and other press requesters had “not established eligibility on any basis . . . put forward”; explaining the release of the second recording appeared to be prompted by a request from counsel for the Heritage Foundation, as memorialized in one of the parties’ past joint status reports, and rejecting DOJ’s argument that such release was merely “de minimis”; further recommending that Heritage was not entitled to a fee reward despite the “significant public interest in the release of the records,” and Heritage’s status as a non-profit requester involved with the dissemination of information, because the government’s initial decision to withhold the recordings under executive privilege, as asserted by the Biden White House, was not unreasonable; stating that even if Heritage were entitled to fees, its fee award should be “zero” because it “enjoyed meager success” and did not substantiate its work or costs on the specific efforts that led to release of the second recording.
Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.
