Court opinion issued May 14, 2026

Alper v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- granting in part and denying in part plaintiff's renewed motion for summary judgment in a case where a death-penalty defense attorney sought FBI records relating to the murder conviction of a death-row inmate; ruling that the public interest in corroborating a death-row inmate's innocence claim outweighed the privacy interests of: (1) FBI agents who authored a 1997 memorandum concluding prosecution of Johnson was "highly unlikely" for lack of evidence; (2) private individuals named in documents related to a witness who pointed to an alternative suspect; and (3) hotel guests whose FBI witness statements corroborated Johnson's innocence where matching names to statements would advance the innocence claim; ordering disclosure of all three categories; and denying reconsideration of the court's prior Exemption 5 ruling protecting five FBI-DOJ attorney-client communications, but ordering the FBI to conduct a more detailed segregability review to determine whether any non-privileged strategic content was disclosable.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: Pay for play

Media law attorney Frank LoMonte recently authored a law journal article suggesting that the government pay news outlets for turning government data into public accountability, the same way we pay solar producers for turning sunlight into electricity.

FOIA News: This and that

• FOIA master Jason Leopold’s playbook: How persistence unlocks public records, Editors & Publishers, 5/14/26

• Trump Admin Has Up to 120,000 Pages of Documents on Ghislaine Maxwell’s Prison Transfer: The bad news: It won’t tell us when our FOIA request for these records will be fulfilled, Mother Jones, 5/13/26.

• To Redact, or not to Redact? A Local LLM Approach to Deliberative Process Privilege Classification, Cornell Univ., 5/11/26.

• Dodging FOIA Could Now Mean Arrest and Strip Search, Depending on Who’s Asking, The Intercept, 5/9/2026.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: . . . And Justice for All

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Def./Sec’y, GS 14, Alexandria, VA, closes 5/13/26 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Air Force, Maxwell AFB, AL, closes 5/15/26 (non-public).

Sup. Att’y-Advisor, Dep’t of Justice/OIP, GS 15, Wash., DC, closes 5/24/26 (public).

Att’y Advisor, Dep’t of Justice/OPR, GS 14-15, Wash., DC, closes 6/2/26 (public).

Att’y-Advisor, Dep’t of Justice/OIP, GS 13-14, Wash., DC, closes 6/5/26 (public).

FOIA News: Federal jury convicts Alexandria man on charges relating to the deletion of U.S. Government databases

Federal jury convicts Alexandria man on charges relating to the deletion of U.S. Government databases

U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Virginia

May 7, 2026

A federal jury convicted Sohaib Akhter, 34, of Alexandria, today on charges of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, password trafficking, and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.

According to court records and evidence presented at trial, Sohaib Akhter, and his twin brother and co-defendant, Muneeb Akhter, worked for a Washington, D.C., company that provided software products and services to more than 45 federal government agencies and hosted data for some federal government clients on servers in Ashburn. On Feb. 1, 2025, Muneeb Akhter asked Sohaib Akhter for the plaintext password of an individual who submitted a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) Public Portal, which was maintained by the Akhters’ employer. Sohaib Akhter conducted a database query on the EEOC database and then provided the password to Muneeb Akhter. That password was subsequently used to access that individual’s email account without authorization.

Read more here.

Court opinions issued May 8, 2026

Energy & Policy Inst. v. TVA (6th Cir.) -- in a case concerning TVA’s communications with two industry groups, the Climate Legal Group and the Power Generation Air Coalition (which were coordinated by a law firm), as well as a TVA insurance policy with AEGIS, affirming in part, reversing in part, and remanding; finding that: (1) the district court correctly upheld agency’s Exemption 4 withholdings for CLG legal updates, membership lists, PGen recruitment materials, and AEGIS insurance policy terms, but erred in upholding withholdings of purely logistical documents and the name of the AEGIS negotiating representative, for which TVA articulated no foreseeable commercial harm; (2) Exemption 6 protected individual names and email addresses but not company names or email domain names; and (3) reversing the denial of attorneys' fees because TVA's mid-litigation release of documents was a "voluntary or unilateral change in position" even though the submitter prompted the release, because "the choice to release documents is TVA's own."

Prasad v. EEOC (D. Ariz.) -- denying plaintiff's motion for attorneys' fees and granting defendant's motion to strike plaintiff's bill of costs in a case where plaintiff sought her EEOC charge file while pursuing arbitration claims; finding plaintiff eligible for fees because the agency's cover letter admitted its mid-litigation disclosure was made solely to resolve the case, but not entitled to an award because the disclosure benefited no one but plaintiff, her motive was personal, and the agency's initial denial was legally reasonable.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued May 7, 2026

Democracy Forward Found. v. SSA (D. Md.) -- denying plaintiff's motion for partial summary judgment in a case involving fee waiver denials on three of four FOIA requests; holding that the court lacked jurisdiction under FOIA to review the SSA's fee waiver denials because the SSA had imposed fees pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1306(c), a separate statute that applies "[n]otwithstanding" FOIA and permits the agency to charge requesters the full cost of responding to requests not directly related to the administration of Social Security programs; noting that FOIA's judicial review provision extends only to "action by a requester regarding the waiver of fees under this section," meaning FOIA itself, and that fees imposed under § 1306(c) fall outside that provision; rejecting plaintiff's argument that jurisdiction was conferred by SSA's own regulations, which purported to make § 1306(c) fee waiver decisions subject to judicial review under FOIA, because 'a regulation cannot grant a federal court jurisdiction when Congress has not done so.'"

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued May 6, 2026

Welter v. U.S. Dep't of the Air Force (D.D.C.) -- in a case where plaintiffs sought Air Force records relating to a child abuse and neglect investigation, granting in part and denying in part both parties' cross-motions for summary judgment; concluding that the Air Force properly invoked Exemption 5's deliberative process privilege for portions of emails and Family Advocacy Program records containing questions, advice, and give-and-take discussion about how to proceed with the investigation, but improperly redacted purely factual information that merely recounted events or consisted of directives from superiors to subordinates, noting that "directions to deliberate do not themselves constitute deliberation"; concluding further that the Air Force adequately demonstrated foreseeable harm by explaining that disclosure would chill candid internal discussions and discourage witnesses from reporting abuse; and lastly, rejecting the Air Force's reliance on Exemption 2 to withhold an email concerning its policy for contacting patients, because under Milner v. Dep't of the Navy, 562 U.S. 562 (2011), Exemption 2 covers rules about personnel, not rules "for personnel to follow in the discharge of their governmental functions."

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued May 5, 2026

Malone v. USPTO (4th Cir.) -- affirming the district court's grant of summary judgment to the agency in a case where plaintiff sought records relating to a Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceeding, including draft opinions circulated to nonpanel judges, and ruling that: (1) disputed draft decisions and related emails were categorically predecisional and deliberative and thus properly withheld under Exemption 5; (2) PTAB's practice of circulating draft opinions to nonpanel judges did not constitute ex parte communications, as that term refers to communications between a party and a decisionmaker, not between two judges, and (3) no government misconduct exception exists under Exemption 5, but even if it did, plaintiff’s argument that PTAB’s circulation of draft opinions constitutes government misconduct was “utterly unsupported by law.”

Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- granting in part and denying in part the agencies' motion for summary judgment in a case concerning border searches of electronic devices, and holding that: (1) DHS properly invoked Exemption 5's deliberative process privilege to withhold legal analyses in a “CRCL Impact Assessment,” rejecting the requester's argument that the privilege fails absent an identifiable final decision; (2) CBP failed to demonstrate that purely factual information in statistical spreadsheets could not be segregated and released; (3) CBP did not justify its use of Exemptions 6 and 7(C) to withhold travelers' country of birth, ethnicity, citizenship, and occupation, and ordering supplemental briefing; (4) ICE and CBP properly invoked Exemption 7(E) to withhold search reasons, notification data, aggregate demographic statistics, and internal analyses; and (5) DHS, CBP, and ICE satisfied FOIA's segregability requirement with the narrow exception of one DHS document citing Exemption 5.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued May 4, 2026

Richards v. NSA (W.D. Ark.) -- determining that NSA properly relied on Exemption 1 (and alternatively Exemption 3) in response to pro se plaintiff’s request for records relating to NSA's collection of intelligence on himself and the agency’s “development of ‘mind control, directed-energy weapons, neural interfacing, remote influence, or behavioral engineering.’”

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.