Court opinions
2025
Dates of decisions below. Please contact us if any of the links are broken. For additional sources of FOIA case law, see "Federal court cases" in Useful Links.
Nov. 26, 2025
Shapiro v. SSA (2nd Cir.) -- reversing and vacating district court’s rulings that plaintiff was entitled to a refund of agency’s administrative processing costs and an award of attorneys’ fees and litigations costs; holding that the Social Security Act’s cost-reimbursement provision, 42 U.S.C. § 1306(c), supersedes the FOIA’s 2007 amendment that limits fees for untimely agency responses; further holding that plaintiff’s request for records about how it decides whether migraines and other headache conditions qualify for disability benefits was not “directly related” to the administration of an SSA program and therefore allowed SSA to charge plaintiff the full costs of processing fees; and concluding that because plaintiff did not obtain any meaningful relief beyond the district court’s erroneous fee decisions, he did not “substantially prevail” and was ineligible for attorneys’ fees or costs.
Nov. 25, 2025
Shapiro v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- in a painfully long 123-page opinion, granting in part and denying in part the parties’ motions for summary judgment concerning multiple requests to the FBI and OIP submitted between 2012 and 2017; determining that: (1) FBI did not justify its claim that two of plaintiff’s requests were improper or unduly burdensome; (2) OIP adequately searched for responsive records, but two of three challenged FBI searches were unreasonable because the agency failed to perform a full-text ECF search for records that merely mentioned or referred to the requested file, the FBI’s explanations for numerous missing serialized documents were insufficient, and the FBI inadequately searched for attachments referenced in produced documents; (3) FBI properly relied on Exemption 3 to withhold information covered by the Pen Register Act and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), but its justification for using the National Security Act was too conclusory; (4) FBI’s declarations were too vague and relied on labels like “draft” for one letter and an analytical report that were redacted under Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege; (5) FBI failed to justify its use of Exemption 7(A) because it did not show that the relevant investigations were actually pending or explain how disclosure would interfere with them; (6) FBI properly relied on implied confidentiality under Exemption 7(D) for foreign government agencies, third-party individuals, and local law enforcement agencies based on the seriousness of the crimes, the sources’ proximity to the investigations, and the risk of reprisal. but the agency provided only conclusory statements for its claims of express assurances of confidentiality; (7) FBI did not sufficiently demonstrate the applicability of Exemption (E) to case file numbers, but properly invoked the exemption to withhold Computer Analysis Response Team reports; database information and printouts; documents revealing the focus of specific FBI investigations; identity and/or locations of FBI or joint units, squads, and divisions; targets, dates, and scope of surveillance; tactical information contain in operational plans (except for historical staffing information for 1963 church bombing); undercover operations, collection and analysis of information, and operational directives.
Nov. 24, 2025
Bermudez v. EOIR (5th Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s denial of plaintiff’s motion for attorney fees and rejecting plaintiff’s argument that the Circuit’s two-prong eligibility and entitlement test had been reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Democracy Forward Found. v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- finding that with limited exceptions, plaintiff demonstrated that its requests for records concerning DOJ’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein investigation qualified for expedited review under agency regulation as a “matter of widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exist possible questions about the government’s integrity that affect public confidence.”
Ball v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- denying plaintiff-inmate’s motion to add Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys in an amended Complaint, because the proposed claim was barred by both claim preclusion and issue preclusion based on earlier litigation.
Nov. 20, 2025
Nat’l Ass’n of Criminal Def. Lawyers v. BOP (D.D.C.) -- in case involving records about prosecutors’ access to emails of inmates, finding that: (1) most of the government’s searches were adequately described and reasonably performed, but the search in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania lacked essential information about the search methodology and Michigan’s declaration conflicted with the Vaughn index; (2) the government’s Exemption 4 claim failed because the government did not clearly show that a vendor’s records concerning the BOP’s messaging system were both customarily and actually treated as confidential; (3) the government properly relied on the deliberative process privilege for many of its claimed withholdings, but a few records were not clearly liked to a specific decision-making process; (4) the government could not rely on the attorney work-product privilege to withhold records that discussed only policy or administrative matters without a reasonable anticipation of litigation; and (5) BOP properly redacted its Special Investigative Supervisors Manual under Exemptions 7(E) and 7(F), finding that disclosure could reveal law enforcement techniques or could jeopardize inmate and staff safety.
Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- holding that the FBI properly relied on Exemptions 1 and 3 in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of requested records “discussing the use of authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act . . . to investigate attendees of President Trump’s Save America Rally and multiple Black Lives Matter events in Washington, D.C. in 2021”; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that FBI waived its Glomar response via public disclosures.
Nov. 12, 2025
Marin v. Driscoll (D.D.C.) -- concluding that the U.S. Army properly relied on Exemption 6 in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of disciplinary records concerning a named individual, as well as investigatory records of a unit that plaintiff tied with four named individuals; noting that plaintiff primarily sought records for use in his court-martial appeal and failed to show that disclosure would reveal significant government misconduct or involved senior officials; further, rejecting plaintiff’s argument that his receipt of certain documents during discovery undermined the agency’s Glomar response.
Nov. 10, 2025
Alford v. Collins (D.D.C.) -- finding that: (1) Department of Veterans Affairs performed an adequate search related to pro se plaintiff’s own benefits, vocational rehabilitation, and the agency’s handling of his prior requests for relief; (2) the VA properly withheld draft advisory opinions and internal deliberations under Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege, but it failed to justify other Exemption 5 withholdings and did not meet its segregability obligation for documents withheld in full; and (3) the VA properly relied on Exemption 6 to redact the names of low-level employees.
Nov. 3, 2025
Viola v. DOJ (3rd. Cir.) -- affirming in part and vacating in part district court’s decision concerning records related to federal government’s prosecution of plaintiff-appellant, and holding that: (1) the district court properly dismissed plaintiff-appellant’s claim against a task force comprised of state and local government entities, because federal funding and oversight did not convert those entities into federal agencies; (2) the district court correctly found that EOUSA performed a reasonable search, but erred in concluding that the FBI’s search was adequate because the FBI failed to demonstrate that it searched all locations likely to contain responsive records; (3) the district court properly found that Exemptions 6 and 7(C) protected records related to third parties, except for EOUSA’s full withholding of certain trial exhibits, correspondence, and witness statements in full; and (4) the FBI’s withholdings under Exemption 7(D) were improvidently granted because the agency failed to provide sufficient evidence that its sources had an implied assurance of confidentiality; and (5) the district court incorrectly upheld FBI’s withholding of database search results under Exemption 7(E), because the agency’s use of that database was a routine technique and the agency failed to show a reasonable risk of circumvention of law.
Stevens v. Dep't of the Army (N.D. Ill.) -- in case concerning records related to Northwestern University’s proposed expansion into Lake Michigan, the court determined that: (1) the Army unreasonably referred plaintiff’s request to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers without conducting its own search for records; and (2) plaintiff constructively exhausted her administrative remedies prior to filing suit and the Army’s subsequent referral of the request to the Wisconsin Army National Guard did not reset exhaustion requirements; and (3) the Wisconsin National Guard conducted a reasonable search of physical records related to a helicopter flight, but it did not adequately explain its search for electronically-stored records.
Oct. 31, 2025
William & Connolly v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- concluding that ICE conducted an adequate search for records related to individuals involved in a sanctions evasion case in the Southern District of New York, and that CBP and USCIS properly withheld records pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(C) and met the statute’s foreseeable harm and segregability requirements.
Oct. 29, 2025
Ecological Rights Found. v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng'rs (N.D. Cal.) -- on motion for attorney’s fees and costs, ruling that: (1) plaintiff was ineligible for an award against the National Marine Fisheries Service because the agency had issued determinations before the lawsuit was filed; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that NMFS’s referral of certain records negated a final determination, finding instead that the referral constituted a constructive withholding subject to administrative appeal; (2) alternatively, plaintiff was not a prevailing party against NMFS as the lawsuit did not prompt the agency to alter its position or disclose additional responsive records; (3) plaintiff was eligible for an award against USACE because its lawsuit served as a catalyst for the agency’s additional searches, record releases, and agreement to produce documents in native format with metadata; and (4) plaintiff was entitled to an award bases on traditional four-factor test, but reducing requested amount to exclude time spent on unsuccessful claims and excessive or duplicative billing.
Oct. 24, 2025
New Orleans Navy Housing v. U.S. Dep’t of the Navy (E.D. La.) -- on renewed summary judgment, ruling that the Navy properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process and attorney–client privileges, met the statute’s foreseeable harm requirement, conducted an adequate segregability analysis, and that in camera review was unnecessary given the agency’s supplemental submissions.
Oct. 22, 2025
Malik v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- on renewed summary judgment, concluding that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services properly relied on Exemptions 7(E) and 7(C) to redact a “Memo for the Record” concerning plaintiff’s application for employment with the agency; noting that the agency’s supplemental declaration explained that the memo in question discussed the Office of Personnel Management's background investigation of plaintiff, which qualified as a law enforcement purpose under Exemption 7.
Oct. 17, 2025
Campaign for Accountability v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming in part and reversing in part the district court’s decision and holding that Office of Legal Counsel’s (OLC) opinions are not subject to FOIA’s “reading-room” disclosure requirements because they are not “final opinions made in the adjudication of cases” nor “statements of policy or interpretations adopted by the agency; vacating the district court’s order requiring disclosure of OLC opinions resolving interagency disputes, reasoning that OLC opinions offer prospective legal advice, not binding orders or adjudications, and therefore do not resolve “cases” or have determinate consequences; noting that although OLC’s opinions are considered authoritative within the Executive Branch, they are not automatically adopted as the “working law” of client agencies unless an agency actually implements them as its own; in a concurring opinion, Judge Rao emphasized that appellant lacked standing because its claims were a generalized grievance without a particularized injury or concrete harm.
Husch Blackwell LLP v. Dep’t of Commerce (D.D.C.) -- in a case concerning records on how and why the Bureau of Industry and Security added certain companies to the “Entity List,” which restricts exports to foreign entities for national security reasons, ruling that: (1) BIS had not justified its withholding under Exemption 1, because its declarations merely repeated classification language without explaining how disclosure would harm national security; and (2) although the Export Control Reform Act qualifies as an Exemption 3 statute, BIS failed to show that withheld memoranda fit within the Ac’s enumerated or closely related categories.
Oct. 16, 2025
Informed Consent Action Network v. FDA (D.D.C.) -- granting 18-month stay after finding that FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) faced exceptional circumstances, specifically “skyrocketing” requests since 2019 and litigation rates that had “exploded” in same time period; noting that agency had demonstrated due diligence through staff reallocation, new hires, and a tiered response system; further noting that plaintiff was a “major contributor to the onslaught,” having submitted more than 350 FOIA requests to CBER and accounting for two-thirds of CBER's open FOIA lawsuits.
Oct. 12, 2025
Buckley v. DOJ (2nd Cir.) (unpublished) — affirming district court’s decision that: (1) the FBI properly relied on Exemptions 7(D) and 7(E) to withhold records concerning their domestic terrorism investigation of plaintiff-appellant, which concluded without charges, and (2) plaintiff-appellant was ineligible for attorneys’ fees. The Court rejected the argument that Exemption 7 was inapplicable because the records were allegedly compiled for “political reasons,” explaining that circuit precedent requires courts to presume that all investigatory records from law enforcement agencies are compiled for a law enforcement purpose. On fees, the court held that plaintiff-appellant failed to show he was a prevailing party under the catalyst theory. Notably, he failed to raise an argument in district court that earlier-submitted release forms supported his catalyst claim, thus precluding the Court from considering it on appeal.
Oct. 10, 2025
Informed Consent Action Network v. Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention (D.D.C.) — in a case involving access to records about COVID-19 vaccines, denying the requester’s fee motion on entitlement grounds; noting the parties agree that the requester is “eligible” to receive attorney’s fees; explaining that of the four factors to be considered when determining entitlement to a fee award, “the first three . . . weigh slightly in plaintiff’s factor,” but the fourth—i.e., the “reasonableness of the agency’s withholding”—”weighs heavily against plaintiff”; with respect to the fourth factor, concluding the agency’s application of Exemption 6 to withhold the names of CDC personnel was reasonable in light of a perceived “palpable threat” to employee privacy, and danger of harassment, at the time the request was submitted, and an assessment that the asserted public interest in disclosure was minimal.
Popov. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (9th Cir.) (unpublished) — affirming district court’s decision that DHS properly withheld a third party’s Alien File under Exemption 6, noting that plaintiff-appellant failed to substantiate his allegations that the third party had committed any fraud or crimes or that DHS had acted improperly.
Oct. 9, 2025
Egana v. U.S. Dep't of Treasury (W.D.N.C.) -- deciding that the Bureau of Fiscal Service performed a reasonable search for records—and found none—related to a $10,000 Series E savings bond allegedly issued in 1964 in plaintiff’s name or under a custodian, claiming entitlement to over $91,000 in value.
Oct. 8, 2025
N.Y. Times Co. v. U.S. Def. Counterintelligence & Sec. Agency (S.D.N.Y.) — denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and ordering the release of a “single, two-page document listing any security clearances granted to Elon Musk”; rejecting the agency’s invocation of Exemptions 6 and 7(C); with respect to Exemption 6, concluding that “substantial public interests in disclosure” outweigh Mr. Musk’s valid, albeit “limited,” privacy interests; noting Mr. Musk’s past history of “publicly discuss[ing] his drug use, NASA’s requirement that he submit to random drug testing . . . , and his contacts with foreign leaders”; explaining that the public interest in disclosure is particularly strong for two reasons, namely, (1) “the public has an interest in knowing whether the leader of SpaceX and Starlink holds the appropriate security clearances,” and (2) because “courts have repeatedly recognized a public interest in understanding the thoroughness, fairness, and accuracy of government investigations and operations”; with respect to Exemption 7(C), bypassing the threshold inquiry of whether the record at issue was “compiled for law enforcement purposes,” and holding that the balancing inquiry favors disclosure.
Oct. 7, 2025
Dahlstrom v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- granting summary judgment to government after finding that USCIS performed a reasonable search for records about the “T visa” program; rejecting plaintiffs’ arguments that the agency’s search was deficient due to a narrow interpretation of the request, failing to search certain databases, and not using search terms and/or keywords preferred by plaintiffs.
Oct. 6, 2025
Ferguson v. DOJ (N.D. Ill.) -- determining that DOJ performed an adequate search for records related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act and the Justice for all Reauthorization Act, and that it properly withheld records under Exemptions 4, 5, and 6; noting that pro se plaintiff failed to follow local rules for filing a summary judgment motion—a deficiency that was itself fatal—but nevertheless proceeding to consider the merits and finding that plaintiff presented no evidence to contradict the government’s showing.
Oct. 1, 2025
Jackson v. HHS (D. Nev.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s claim against the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for lack of standing because plaintiff did not personally submit requests for records about CMS’s investigation of him for Medicaid fraud; instead, the requests were submitted by his private investigator, who never informed CMS that he was acting on plaintiff’s behalf.
Sept. 30, 2025
Farahi v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.C. Cir.) — affirming the district court; holding that the requester’s FBI file was protected against disclosure under Exemption 7(A); noting, at the outset, that the district court properly recognized the FBI had “carried its burden” to demonstrate the records at issue were compiled for law enforcement purposes; noting further that the lower court “correctly concluded that disclosure could be reasonably expected to interfere with pending or reasonably anticipated enforcement proceedings” given the requester’s past history and longstanding ties to the “Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,” “Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and other known Al Qaeda members,” and “multiple convicted or indicted terrorists,” including “Jose Padilla”; rejecting the requester’s objection to the FBI’s categorical use of the exemption; determining the agency had taken reasonable steps to segregate and release nonexempt information from the FBI file, even though those efforts were largely described in an ex parte declaration.
Am. Transparency v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C) — in a case involving records about the payment of royalties—or so-called “inventor awards”—to employees of the National Institutes of Health, denying the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; concluding the agency could not withhold the requested information pursuant to Exemption 6 because “[f]ederal government employees have a limited privacy interest in information about their compensation,” and “there is a clear public interest” vis-a-vis “question[ing] whether investors’ financial interests in the success of their technologies affects how they conduct clinical trials”; rejecting the agency’s asserted foreseeable harms under Exemption 6, such as violation of the “expectation of trust and confidentiality that licensees and inventors have with NIH,” and “limit[ing] bargaining opportunities” of employees once they leave government service; determining there is a “genuine dispute of material fact” as to whether Exemption 3, in conjunction with the Federal Transfer and Technology Act, and Exemption 4 might apply because it is unclear “whether it is possible to back-calculate how much a licensee pays in royalties from the amount NIH distributes to an individual inventor.”
McKathan v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that the pro se requester failed to exhaust administrative remedies with the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys by filing an appeal; rejecting the argument that the component’s non-adverse determination was improper because it lacked a notice about appeal rights; holding further that the Criminal Division conducted a reasonable search.
Doe v. Immigration & Customs Enf’t (D.D.C.) — in a case involving records about ICE’s improper disclosure of an asylum applicant’s confidential information, denying the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment and providing the agency “another opportunity” to defend its withholdings; holding that the agency had not sufficiently justified its use of Exemption 5; noting the agency did not explain how records withheld under the deliberative-process privilege actually played part of any “decisional process”; noting further that, while ICE had shown why the attorney-client privilege would apply in part to records reflecting requests for legal advice, it had not demonstrated the application of the privilege to documents reflecting the provision of legal advice; holding further that the agency failed to identify non-generic foreseeable harms from disclosure, and did not tie such harms to the records at issue; of particular note, concluding that ICE’s asserted foreseeable harms for records withheld under the attorney-client privilege were too “broad [and] categorial,” as the agency incorrectly assumed a “per se harm[]” stemming from “disclosing any attorney-client material” could satisfy the statutory standard.
Heritage Found. v. Dep't of Justice (D. Del.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that a declarant from the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys was competent of laying a factual foundation for defending the agency’s withholdings, despite not having first-hand knowledge of the underlying records, which originated in the Special Counsel’s Office; holding further that the agency properly applied Exemption 5 (together with the deliberative-process, attorney-client, and attorney work-product privileges) to various categories of records, including draft congressional correspondence and related internal communications, handwritten notes, and e-mail; concluding that DOJ properly withheld the names of U.S. Attorney’s Office employees and references to an employee family member under Exemption 6; finally, holding the agency properly withheld an internal file name used to reference the Hunter Biden investigation under Exemption 7(E).
Sept. 29, 2025
Milliron v. DOD (W.D. Mich.) -- adopting magistrate judge’s report and recommendation and holding that the department properly withheld portions of a Georgia Tech report under Exemption 4; rejecting plaintiff’s claim that the report was intended for public release, finding instead that it was clearly labeled as confidential, designated for internal government use only, and contained proprietary methodologies protected from disclosure.
Aland v. U.S. Dep’t of the Interior (N.D. Ill.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s claims against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Office of the Secretary, because plaintiff appealed the FSW’s denial after the 90-day deadline and his appeal to the Secretary failed to include certain documents required by Departmental regulations.
Lowe v. U.S. Dep't of Justice Office of Info. Policy (S.D.N.Y.) -- adopting magistrate judge’s report and recommendation and finding that: (1) EOUSA conducted an adequate search for records concerning plaintiff’s criminal case and properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 3, 5, 6, 7(C), 7(D), 7(E), and 7(F); and (2) neither EOUSA nor DEA was required to re-process a DEA interview report that EOUSA located only in redacted form, but plaintiff could submit a separate request to DEA directly.
Informed Consent Action Network v. NASA (D.D.C.) -- in case concerning communications between two Caltech-employed scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ruling that the records weren’t “agency records” because they were created and stored by Caltech employees and NASA did not control the records as they were on Caltech systems, not government servers.
Khatchadourian v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- granting partial summary to both parties in case concerning records about James Ralph Rose, Jr., who was convicted in 1979 for plotting to bomb whaling vessels in Chile; specifically, the court held that: (1) the FBI failed to justify its use of Exemption 7(C) to withhold names of deceased individuals, those who signed waivers, or whose identities were already public; (2) the FBI met its burden to protect the identity of confidential informants under Exemption 7(D); (3) the FBI’s explanations were too vague and conclusory to justify its Exemption 7(E) withholdings; (4) the FBI could not rely on Exemption 7(F) to withhold explosives-related information already made public at trial, or to withhold the name of law enforcement personnel because the supporting affidavit was unsigned; and (5) the FBI’s Glomar responses, to which plaintiff did not dispute, were upheld under Exemptions 1, 3, 7(D), 7(E), and 7(F).
Eban v. DOD (D.D.C.) -- in case concerning “Operation Whitecoat”—a Cold War-era U.S. Army medical research program that used volunteer Seventh-Day Adventist soldiers as test subjects in biological warfare experiments—the court found that: (1) the Army failed to conduct an adequate search for electronic records at two key research facilities due to incomplete search terms, a limited search scope, and inconsistencies in the Army’s declarations; emphasizing that searching only the "most likely" location for responsive records was insufficient and that the Army was required to search all locations reasonably likely to contain responsive records; and (2) the Army’s search for physical records at various facilities was sufficient, reasoning there was no strong evidence that responsive records existed only in hard-copy form and had not been accounted for through electronic searches.
Sept. 26, 2025
Am. First Legal Found. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case involving records about DOJ’s handling of the prosecuting and sentencing of an arsonist from the 2020 Minneapolis riots, granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; concluding that a presentence investigation report (“PSR”), which originated with the U.S. Probation Office, qualified as an “agency record” under DOJ’s legal control because, inter alia, the Bureau of Prisons uses such reports for “multiple purposes post-sentencing,” and the reports are transmitted to the U.S. Parole Commission to be integrated into the “framework of executive branch decision-making”; rejecting, in this regard, DOJ’s argument that the PSR at issue ought to be sealed, as the agency failed to produce a valid sealing order, and its public referencing of the PSR in sentencing filings “waives any residual confidentiality claim[s]”; holding further, with respect to a record reflecting DOJ’s recommendation for a downward variance, that the record was properly withheld under Exemption 5, in conjunction with the deliberative-process and attorney work-product privileges, as well as Exemption7(C), and that DOJ satisfied the foreseeable-harm standard.
Grand Marina Investors v. Internal Revenue Serv. (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding, firstly, that the requester failed to administratively exhaust its challenge to the IRS’s search, in large part because the requester failed to address the issue in its summary-judgment briefing and “‘spell out its arguments squarely and distinctly’”; holding further that the IRS properly applied Exemption 3, in conjunction with I.R.C. § 6103; Exemption 5, in conjunction with the deliberative-process privilege; and Exemption 7(E); describing the requester’s argument, at various points, as “woefully underdeveloped,” “ring[ing] hallow,” and otherwise ungrounded in controlling caselaw.
Sept. 25, 2025
Jones v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- on renewed summary judgment in case concerning pro se plaintiff’s prosecution records, ruling that: (1) DOJ cured its deficient search by following an “obvious lead” to discover additional records; (2) DOJ properly relied on the attorney work-product privilege to withhold interview notes, prosecution memoranda, draft or unfiled pleadings, and case file notes; and (3) DOJ properly invoked the deliberative process privileges to withhold a prosecution memorandum used internally to help decide whether to charge plaintiff.
Power the Future v. Dep’t of the Interior (D.D.C.) -- concluding that the agency performed a reasonable search for text messages after crediting the agency’s explanation that the messages were unrecoverable due to the loss and damage of the employee’s phones and that all plausible means to retrieve the messages were attempted.
Sept. 24, 2025
Informed Consent Action Network v. Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention (D.D.C.) — denying each party’s motion for summary judgment; concluding the government had not established whether its “contract employee” functioned “just as an employee would” in a “disinterested” way; concluding further that the agency had failed to adequately demonstrate the applicability of the deliberative-process privilege and justify its segregation of factual and deliberative material; rejecting the requester’s argument that, under the foreseeable-harm standard, the potential for “public confusion” is not a recognized interest protected by the deliberative-process privilege, but also determining the government had failed to offer anything but a “boilerplate” “rationale” here for the link “between the specified harm—public confusion—and the nature of the withheld documents”; directing the parties to refile their motions, thus providing the agency “a second bite at the apple.”
Am. Oversight, Inc. v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — on remand from the D.C. Circuit, 101 F.4th 909, denying the intervening U.S. House Committee on Ways & Means’s motion for summary judgment and granting the requester’s cross-motion; concluding, under the D.C. Circuit’s so-called “modified control test,” that “five sets of email communications and attachments” comprising communications between agencies and Congress about “healthcare reform legislation,” which cannot be exempt under Exemption 5, qualify as “agency records” and are not under Congress’s legal “control”; rejecting Congress’s argument that the mere affixing of an email “Legend” asserting control is adequate because it is only a “generally applicable disclaimer” without the required “specificity” to treat the records at issue as congressional in nature, and no other evidence exists to demonstrate any effort to “set parameters [reflecting Congress’s retention of control] for the information exchanged with the Agency”; noting also that the agencies conceded they had used the records “as they saw fit” for their own decision-making processes,” a fact Congress did not deny but attempted to argue should not be considered as part of the Court’s control analysis.
Sept. 23, 2025
Gov’t Accountability & Oversight v. SEC (D.D.C.) -- partially granting SEC’s summary judgment motion in case concerning internal emails withheld under Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege; finding that the SEC adequately justified using the privilege for records related to climate rulemaking, and adequately addressed foreseeable harm and segregability; however, the agency failed to justify withholdings for three entries vaguely described as concerning “various rulemakings.”
Sept. 18, 2025
Crow Creek Sioux Tribe v. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Servs. (D. S.D.) -- awarding plaintiff $27,484 in attorney’s fees and costs after finding it was both eligible and entitled to such an award; as to eligibility, the court concluded that the lawsuit was the catalyst for the agency’s delayed response, noting that the agency did not begin searching for records until nearly two months after the complaint was filed and did not attempt to extend the statutory deadline; regarding entitlement, the court determined that plaintiff’s request served a significant public interest, involved no commercial motive, and that the government lacked a reasonable legal basis for the delay; lastly, the court deemed the requested fees largely reasonable, except for time spent on an unfiled summary judgment motion, which warranted a 50 percent reduction.
Sept. 16, 2025
Brown v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- finding that: (1) the FBI performed an adequate search for records concerning plaintiff’s 1995 arrest; (2) the FBI, DEA, and EOUSA properly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) to redact identifying information about special agents, local law enforcement personnel, and third parties mentioned or of investigative interest; (3) FBI properly invoked Exemption 7(E) to protect “nonpublic coordination with other government agencies” and “sensitive information contained within FBI FD-515 forms”; (4) as an alternative basis for Exemptions 6 and 7(C), DEA properly relied on Exemption 7(F) to protect names and identifying information of DEA agents, and the EOUSA properly used the same exemption protected names and identifying information of individuals who were interviewed by the FBI; and (5) the FBI failed to adequately describe, let alone justify, withholding some pages that may have been withheld in full.
Sept. 15, 2025
Azizi v. Noem (E.D. Cal.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s FOIA claim seeking access to “aggregate data and statistics related to humanitarian parole applications for Afghanistan citizens and nationals,” because plaintiffs lacked standing to litigate a FOIA request submitted by their attorney on his own behalf.
Sept. 10, 2025
Hoffmann v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (E.D. Pa.) -- on renewed summary judgment, ruling that the government performed a reasonable search for communications related to migrant coordination at the Eagle Pass, Texas Port of Entry; further, finding that CBP’s inability to locate two relevant Samsung phones from 2019—one destroyed pursuant to routine data security protocols and the other unaccounted for despite extensive searches—did not reflect bad faith or intentional spoliation.
Sept. 9, 2025
Usher v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- following in-camera review of 9 pages of records pertaining to antitrust proceedings against plaintiff, finding that DOJ improperly redacted portions of FBI interview notes under Exemption 3 in conjunction with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e); specifically, the court held that only statements explicitly identifying documents as grand jury exhibits could be withheld—not redacted content consisting of witness’s discussions about public market data or trading activity, which did not implicate a secret aspect of the grand jury’s investigation.
Sept. 8, 2025
Greenspan v. DOT (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration properly withheld Tesla-related documents under Exemption 4 and that disclosure would cause foreseeable competitive harm to Tesla and undermine NHTSA’s ability to gather similar data; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that NHTSA’s delay in ruling on Tesla’s confidentiality requests meant the information should no longer be protected under FOIA; and (2) NHTSA properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold to internal discussions on whether and how to investigate Tesla, and that disclosure would foreseeably harm agency decision-making by discouraging candid internal dialogue.
Zaid v. DHS (D. Md.) -- determining that: (1) ICE performed a reasonable search and properly withheld records under Exemption 7(A) due to their connection to active child exploitation investigations; and (2) ICE properly withheld identifying information about third parties under Exemptions 6 and 7(C), rejecting plaintiff’s argument that names of all ICE employees at GS-14 salary level or above must be disclosed.
New Orleans Navy Hous. v. U.S. Dep't of Navy (E.D. La.) -- in a case concerning records related to the management and funding of a military housing project, finding that the Navy properly withheld some records pursuant to Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege, but held that its foreseeable harm explanations and many of its Vaughn Index entries were insufficient; the court also rejected plaintiffs’ argument that the withheld documents related solely to contract administration and were therefore categorically outside the scope of the privilege.
Nat’l Pub. Radio v. U.S. Cen. Command (S.D. Cal.) -- in ongoing case concerning a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan, tentatively ruling that plaintiff was both eligible and entitled to interim attorney’s fees and costs; further, tentatively deferring its decision as to the hours, costs and final amount appropriate and ordering parties to attend a settlement conference with magistrate judge.
Sept. 4, 2025
N.Y. Times v. DOJ (S.D.N.Y) -- holding that DOJ did not “improperly” withhold Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report concerning President Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, because an injunction issued by a federal court in Florida prohibits the report’s release; rejecting plaintiff’s collateral attack on the the Florida court’s jurisdiction since its order had at least a colorable basis in protecting co-defendants’ fair trial rights and it was implicitly recognized by the Eleventh Circuit.
Sept. 2, 2025
Proj. for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability v. ODNI (D.D.C.) -- in a case concerning a former agency director’s testimony about purchases of Americans’ data, determining that: (1) ODNI properly relied on Exemption 1 and 3 to withhold certain classified records on intelligence sources and methods, but agency’s explanation for some redactions were too conclusory; (2) ODNI’s redactions under the attorney-client communications privilege were proper, but its justifications for invoking the deliberative process privilege were conclusory and insufficiently detailed to show foreseeable harm; (3) ODNI’s reliance on Exemption 7(E) appeared to be proper for FBI records describing non-public law enforcement techniques under Section 702 of FISA, but a supplemental affidavit was required to clarify whether any redactions improperly included legal analysis or interpretations of the law; and (4) rejecting the plaintiff’s argument that previously issued unclassified policy guidance constituted official acknowledgment of withheld information.
Aug. 29, 2025
New Civil Liberties All. v. SEC (D.D.C.) -- concluding that: (1) the SEC demonstrated that it performed an adequate search for records concerning a “control deficiency”; (2) the agency properly withheld its communications with outside investigators under the attorney-work product privilege, noting that the consultant corollary applied to the group’s work and that anticipated litigation motivated the creation of the disputed records; and (3) the agency properly invoked Exemption 6 to withhold employee and contractor names and contact details.
Aug. 28, 2025
Schubert v. BOP (D.D.C.) -- ruling that pro se inmate failed to exhaust his administrative remedies for one request concerning an alleged BOP employee, and BOP properly refused to confirm or deny the existence of personnel records about another alleged employee under Exemption 6.
MSW Media, Inc. v. U.S. DOGE Serv. (D.D.C.) -- granting plaintiffs’ motion to preserve records in FOIA action because: (1) plaintiffs raised serious legal questions about whether Elon Musk was acting as a de facto USDS employee; (2) there was a risk of irreparable harm due to potential deletion of records, especially messages sent via Signal; (3) the burden on USDS to preserve records was minimal; and (4) preserving the records served the public interest in government transparency.
Informed Consent Action Network v. FDA (D.D.C.) -- granting an initial six-month stay instead of the requested 18 months after finding the agency showed exceptional circumstances due to court-ordered production of millions of COVID-19 vaccine records and demonstrated due diligence in processing FOIA requests; limiting the stay to avoid rendering disclosures stale or irrelevant.
Aug. 27, 2025
James Madison Proj. v. CIA (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) the CIA properly invoked Exemptions 1 and 3 to withhold both its 2022 assessments of so-called “Havana syndrome” and an unknown number of undescribed records responsive to plaintiff’s request for “intelligence information relied upon” and “findings made” in connection with those assessments; and (2) the CIA was not required to perform a search for quantitative or qualitative information before issuing a “no number, no list” response, because “nothing the agency uncovered could be released,” and thus there was “no utility in CIA’s conducting a further search.”
Aug. 26, 2025
Burleigh v. Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n (D.D.C.) — denying plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction; concluding plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate irreparable harm by explaining how the requested records were “‘time-sensitive and highly probative, or even essential to the integrity, of an imminent event, after which event the utility of the records would be lessened or lost’”; noting the requesters’ “complaints . . . [about needing] due expedition have largely been addressed by the grant of expedited consideration they have already received”; nevertheless opining that “plaintiffs’ consternation with the course of events since the lawsuit was filed is not wholly misplaced” since the agency has not been willing to provide a timeline for the completion of production and gave plaintiffs’ an “initial production” of “only 35 pages.”
Aug. 22, 2025
Bolin v. NARA (D. Nev.) -- dismissing as moot plaintiff’s FOIA claim that NARA violated the statute’s reading room provision by failing by failing to digitize and publish JFK assassination records, because Executive Order 14,176 mandated full release and digitization of the JFK Collection.
Aug. 21, 2025
Duda v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- in case concerning audio recordings related to FBI’s investigations of Emmett Till’s murder, ruling with respect to one recording that: (1) in camera review was needed to determine whether a source received an express or implied assurance of confidentiality, as the FBI claimed, because the court received a competing declaration from a former agency who originally obtained the recording; (2) FBI improperly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) to withhold identifying details of third parties mentioned on the recording, noting that the agency had no basis to use the “100-year rule” to determine whether any person was still alive; further finding that there was a profound public interest in understanding the government’s handling of “one of the most consequential acts of racial violence in American history”; and (3) rejecting as “inconceivable” the FBI’s conclusory segregability claim that only one minute of the 100-minute recording could be released, emphasizing that targeted redactions or voice modulation could protect third party identities.
Aug. 20, 2025
Arden Row Assets, LLC v. IRS (D.D.C) -- finding that: (1) IRS properly withheld records of plaintiffs’ 2018 tax audits under the deliberative process privilege; rejecting plaintiffs’ argument that a “legally harmless” act of backdating records triggered a government misconduct exception, which the D.C. Circuit has never recognized; further noting that such an exception would apply only to "extreme” and “nefarious” misconduct, whereas the agency’s behavior was “more easily ascribed to ‘incompetence’”; (2) IRS properly withheld records under the attorney-client privilege and plaintiff failed to show that the crime-fraud exception applied, because the agency’s backdating was not illegal and there was no evidence of fraudulent intent; further, plaintiff forfeited its argument that the IRS committed subject-matter waiver of the attorney-client privilege by raising it for the first time in their reply brief, and in any event the disputed records were independently protected by the deliberative process privilege; and (3) IRS properly invoked Exemption 3 in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103(e)(7) to withhold tax return information whose release could impair federal tax administration; and (4) IRS correctly relied on Exemption 7(A) to protect records related to Arden Row’s ongoing Tax Court proceedings, as disclosure could interfere with enforcement by revealing the IRS’s strategies, evidence, and focus.
Aug. 19, 2025
Grigsby v. DOJ (N.D. Cal.) -- ruling that FBI properly denied expedited processing of more than seven thousand responsive pages concerning plaintiff, finding that his age, past indictments (resulting in acquittals), and decades-old medica coverage did not establish a “compelling need.”
S. Envtl. Law Ctr. v. Tenn. Valley Auth. (E.D. Tenn.) -- concluding that: (1) TVA conducted reasonable searches for various records sought in three requests, including by consulting with subject-matter agency experts; (2) TVA properly relied on Exemption 4 to withhold contractor’s billing rates, pricing strategies, and other commercially valuable information; (3) TVA properly relied on the deliberative process privilege to withhold draft documents (with comments and track changes), communications reflecting recommendations, critiques, and give-and-take discussions; (4) TVA properly withheld certain records pursuant to the attorney work-product and attorney-client privileges; and (5) TVA met the foreseeable harm and segregability requirements for withholdings under both exemptions.
Baker v. FDA (E.D. Cal.) (Mag. J.) -- recommending dismissal of action for lack of jurisdiction because the requests at issue were submitted by plaintiff as president of his company, not by plaintiff individually, and therefore plaintiff lacked standing to sue; further finding that substituting the company as plaintiff would not cure the defect, because the company’s principal place of business was outside the district in which the case was filed.
Aug. 18, 2025
Lenz v. CIA (D D.C.) -- on renewed summary judgment concerning the 1962 Stonehill raids in the Philippines, holding that: (1) the CIA properly withheld records concerning “a range of [CIA] functions and operations” pursuant to Exemption 1, finding its updated Vaughn Index and partial document releases sufficient, and concluding that classification was not invalidated by potentially illegal government conduct ; (2) the CIA properly relied on Exemption 3 in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103 to withhold third-party tax-identifying information, rejecting plaintiff’s unsupported claim that the information was already public; and (3) at the FBI’s request, the properly withheld the names and identifying information of “third parties of investigative interest” under Exemption 7(C) and foreign government agency information under Exemption 7(D), dismissing plaintiff’s speculation that a redacted name was a deceased person with no privacy interests.
Aug. 15, 2025
Ezeah v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- granting government’s unopposed motion for summary judgment after concluding that: (1) FBI conducted an adequate search for records concerning plaintiff, a pro se prisoner; (2) FBI properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 5, 7(C), and 7(E), and met both the foreseeable harm and segregability requirements; and (3) FBI properly relied on Exemption 7(C) in refusing to confirm or deny existence of complaints filed against the FBI agent who interviewed plaintiff.
Aug. 14, 2025
Louise Trauma Ctr. v. USCIS (4th Cir.) -- reversing district court’s decision and holding that: (1) plaintiff constructively exhausted its administrative remedies before filing suit for each of its requests, which USCIS acknowledged receiving but never otherwise responded to until litigation commenced; (2) agency’s post-litigation production of records did not moot plaintiff’s claims because agency did not produce all requested records and plaintiff disputed the withholdings; and (3) plaintiff was not required to file an administrative appeal to challenge agency’s post-lawsuit withholdings, noting that a contrary ruling would allow agencies “to engage in gamesmanship that would fundamentally undermine the FOIA timeliness requirement.”
Gilbert v. U.S. Air Force (D.D.C.) -- determining that: (1) the Air Force performed an adequate search for investigatory records concerning plaintiff, rejecting her contention of bad faith based on the delayed production of a key document; and (2) the Air Force properly relied on Exemption 3, in conjunction with the Inspector General Act of 1978, to withhold identifying information about a complainant, whose identity has not been made public through official disclosure.
Aug. 12, 2025
State of Georgia v. Dep’t of Justice (D.C. Cir.) — reversing the district court in principal part and entering judgment in favor of the government; holding, like the Fourth Circuit, that communications exchanged between an agency and private parties can nevertheless satisfy Exemption 5’s “inter-” or “intra-agency” threshold when those communications reflect “attorney work-product” shared “with aligned parties under a common-interest agreement rooted in shared interests and a need for confidentiality”; noting, in response to Georgia’s arguments, that caselaw on the consultant-corollary doctrine, while informative for reaching a functionalist reading of “intra-agency,” does not “reflexively control in the distinct context of this case”; holding further that, aside from two initial emails which predated the "memorialization of . . . [a] common interest agreement,” the remaining records were, in fact, properly covered by the attorney work-product privilege—an issue Georgia did not dispute—and DOJ had not waived that privilege.
Ctr. for Water Sec. & Cooperation v. Envtl. Prot. Agency (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment in a case involving records related to enforcement of the Clean Water Act; holding the agency appropriately withhold records—specifically, “spreadsheets containing information about different demographic entities” and their use to draft Financial Capability Assessment guidance—under Exemption 5, in conjunction with the deliberative-process privilege; noting that “population data and similar statistics,” while factual in nature, are here inextricably intertwined with agency analysis that reveals a deliberative decision-making process; holding further that the agency satisfied FOIA’s foreseeable-harm standard, in that it explained disclosure would “‘discourage experimentation’ and make it more difficult for the Agency to complete realistic assessments of possible enforcement policy”
Randhawa v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (E.D. Cal.) — recommending, in a magistrate judge report, in relevant part, that the plaintiffs’ FOIA claim should be dismissed for failure “to plead sufficient facts to establish a basis for relief”; noting plaintiffs never described “what information [they] sought . . . whether documents were provided . . . or how DHS’s response was inadequate”; noting further that plaintiffs’ “vague and conclusory two-sentence FOIA allegations are insufficient to establish a cognizable legal theory,” and that amendment would be futile, as it would not overcome mootness concerns due to plaintiffs’ failure to oppose DHS’s motion to dismiss.
Aug. 11, 2025
Americans for Fair Treatment v. USPS (D.D.C.) -- on renewed summary judgment, deciding that: (1) USPS’s “speculative” explanations failed to establish foreseeable harm that would result from disclosure of records withheld under the deliberative process privilege; (2) USPS properly invoked the attorney-client privilege and its foreseeable harm explanation was “enough to pass” despite being “broad in a generic sense”; and (3) agency did not provide enough information to demonstrate that it properly segregated information with reasonable specificity.
Aug. 8, 2025
Friends of the River v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng'rs (D.D.C.) (Mag. J.) -- ruling that: (1) plaintiff was both eligible for attorney’s fees (which the agency did not dispute) and entitled to such fees because all four applicable factors favored plaintiff; noting that the agency acted unreasonably by obtaining a transfer of venue based on false facts and by failing to demonstrate foreseeable harm for pre-2016 requests after agreeing—and then being ordered—to do so; and (2) plaintiff would be awarded litigation costs and $491,676 in attorney’s fees, not $747,819 as requested, because Washington, D.C’s hourly rates applied (not San Francisco’s) and billing deficiencies warranted a further 20 percent reduction.
Aug. 7, 2025
Brook v. Holzerland (5th Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that requester’s FOIA claims against HHS were barred by the six-year statute of limitations, 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a); rejecting requester’s arguments that agency delay was a “continuing tort” that reset the filing deadline or that the agency misrepresented requester’s right to sue, thus warranting equitable tolling.
Korf v. U.S. Dep’t of State (S.D. Fla.) (Mag. J.) -- denying government’s motion for an Open America stay after finding that the agency both failed to show the exceptional circumstances existed and that it exercised due diligence in processing plaintiff’s request; further ruling that summary judgment briefing was not premature even though the government had not yet processed all responsive records, because plaintiff contested matters unrelated to withholdings, such as the adequacy of the agency’s search and the agency’s rate of processing.
Aug. 6, 2025
Driggs v. CIA (E.D. Va.) -- in case involving records about Americans allegedly held as prisoners of war following the Korean and Vietnam Wars, deciding that: (1) plaintiffs waived their right to challenge redactions to a partially declassified “Critical Assessment” based on their representations in two joint status reports that limited the parties’ disputed issues; (2) one plaintiff was precluded from challenging Exemption 1 and 3 redactions made to another report (“Review of the Charges”), because same plaintiff lost an earlier case involving same report; (3) government properly relied on Exemptions 1 and 3 to withhold the disputed report, and plaintiff’s allegations of bad faith in the creation of that report over 25 years ago were legally irrelevant.
Aug. 4, 2025
Power the Future v. White House Council on Envtl. Quality (D.D.C.) -- finding that plaintiff’s request for all emails sent or received by one employee over nearly three years was “unreasonably burdensome” (and therefore not reasonably described as required by FOIA ), because the agency estimated that processing the request “would require 21,870 hours, or 911 workdays, if all current FOIA Specialists employed by the Agency processed the request full-time”; further taking into account that the agency employee held a “high-level position” and his emails “would likely implicate numerous FOIA exemptions and require time-consuming internal review and consultation with the White House Counsel’s Office.”
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- concluding the agency’s use of Glomar and its categorical withholding of any responsive documents under Exemptions 6 and 7(C) was unjustified; explaining “DOJ’s Glomar response was not justified here for two reasons”: (1) the information at issue is already in the public domain, having been disclosed in other ligation through testimony, and (2) there is no evidence that confirming or denying the existence of responsive records would cause any harm to privacy interests; explaining further that the agency’s categorical withholdings were inappropriate because the privacy interests at stake are diminished and the agency has “underplay[ed] the relevant public interest.”
Rute v. DOJ (E.D. Tex.) -- ruling that: (1) plaintiff failed to administratively appeal denials from DOJ’s Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and the Criminal Division, thus warranting dismissals of his claims against those agencies with prejudice; and (2) FBI properly refused to confirm or deny the existence of “public integrity investigations” against named third parties from Collin County, Texas; and (3) FBI failed to conduct adequate searches for records related to public integrity investigations against unnamed elected officials, attorneys, or law firms in Collins County, Texas, because the agency should have inputted the term “Collin County” into its Central Records System conjunction with the term “public integrity” to narrow the 800,000 results yielded by the latter term.
Aug. 1, 2025
Leopold v. U.S. Secret Serv. (D.D.C.) — in a case over “documents concerning any Presidential records that were removed from the White House to Mar-a-Lago,” holding that the requester was “eligible for and entitled to a fee award,” but limiting the award to “20% of the amount claimed,” or $15,955; rejecting the government’s argument that to qualify as “eligible” for a fee award on a catalyst theory the requester must actually obtain records; on the question of entitlement, finding there was some public benefit derived from the suit, even though no further records were located or released, given the public interest in the underlying subject matter; at the same time, concluding “[t]here was a reasonable basis for Defendants’ refusal to search,” but this “is insufficiently decisive to counterbalanace” the other factors weighing in the requester’s favor; ultimately reducing the attorneys’ fee request by 80%.
July 31, 2025
Wright v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion to extend an eighteen-month Open America stay that expired in mid-April 2025 by an additional six months; concluding the Food and Drug Administration is entitled to an extended stay because “exceptional circumstances” continue to exist, namely, “court-ordered productions” in other litigation that has “created a volume of requests that vastly exceeded Congress’[s] expectation,” and a “significant reduction in workforce that was unplanned”; noting the agency has otherwise “exercised due diligence” in processing; also, denying the requester’s motion to “order President Donald J. Trump’s political appointees to personally review this case,” as such relief is unavailable under the FOIA,” but advising the requester that, given his “First Amendment right to petition his government,” he may raise grievances about the handling of his request with “political appointees within HHS and DOJ.”
Torp v. U.S. Office of Mgmt. & Budget (W.D. Mich.) -- adopting magistrate judge’s recommendation to grant summary judgment to OMB because plaintiff received all the existing forms he requested; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that OMB unreasonably excluded “the package of supporting information” submitted with those forms, noting that plaintiff “received exactly what he requested” and he “‘was free to submit a new FOIA request’”; further, rejecting plaintiff’s request for litigation costs because OMB disclosed the requested records prior to any court ruling and the delay in disclosure was explained by the difficulty in locating archived records.
July 30, 2025
Ctr. for Investigative Reporting v. DOL (9th Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that Exemption 4 did not protect reports filed by certain contractors from 2016 to 2020 describing the composition of their workforces, including employee job categories and demographics; determining that the reports did not meet “plain meaning” of “commercial” information, which the Circuit held must be “made to be bought and sold or . . . describes an exchange of goods or services for profit”; rejecting district court’s reasoning that the reports were not “commercial” because they lacked “commercial value” and would not cause competitive harm if disclosed.
July 29, 2025
Cury v. Dep’t of State (W.D. Wash.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding the agency properly invoked Exemption 3, in conjunction with Section 222(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which implicates records “pertaining to the issuance or refusal of vias or permits to enter the United States”; noting that, while “[t]he Ninth Circuit has not considered whether the protections of INA § 222(f) extend to visa revocation documents,” other courts of appeal have “held that they do”; rejecting the requester’s arguments not to follow the Second and Eleventh Circuits on that front.
Webster v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding the agency properly issued a Glomar response to decline to confirm or deny the existence of records about an FBI investigation into a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer assaulted by the pro se requester, a convicted January 6th participant; rejecting the requester’s argument that the FBI either waived its Glomar response by officially acknowledging an investigation into the police officer, or that the public interest in disclosure overrode any privacy interests in the fact of such investigation under Exemptions 6 and 7(C).
July 28, 2025
Glenwood Springs Citizens All. v. Dep’t of the Interior (D. Colo.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; rejecting the requester’s objections to one of the agency’s declarations “as hearsay,” and explaining that, in the FOIA context, an affidavit need not be provided by an “‘individual who participated in the actual search’”; holding the agencies conducted a reasonable search, despite not searching their headquarters offices in Washington, D.C., which were determined unlikely to hold relevant records; concluding the agencies properly invoked Exemption 4 to protect certain sales reports and escrow account calculation files, as well as Exemption 5, in conjunction with the attorney-client, attorney work-product, and confidential commercial information privileges; notably omitting any analysis vis-a-vis the agencies’ satisfaction of the foreseeable-harm standard.
Farm Labor Organizing Comm. v. Dep’t of Labor (D.D.C.) — granting in part the requester’s motion for summary judgment; holding that, as to information about certain tobacco buyers “already in the public domain,” the agency’s invocation of Exemption 4 must fail as the information is not “confidential”; noting, in its articulation of the appropriate legal standards, that under the foreseeable-harm standard most courts have required an agency to show how disclosure of Exemption 4-protected information would “harm an interest protected by this exemption, such as by causing genuine harm to . . . economic or business interests”; noting further that the agency failed to provide “non-hearsay" evidence” about the objections of certain tobacco growers, whether they treat their buyers’ identifies as confidential, and whether disclosure would harm their economic interests; declining to decide, for now, whether courts should “determine whether information is ‘confidential’ . . . [by] look[ing] only to how the party who submitted that information to the government . . . treats it”—an issue not yet addressed by any court; finally, ordering renewed briefing.
Roland v. Dep’t of Justice (N.D. Ill.) — granting the government’s motion to dismiss with prejudice; holding the pro se requester’s “frivolous” claims were moot because the FBI and DOJ Criminal Division provided responses before the filing of the complaint, the requester did not file any administrative appeals, and the complaint included no factual allegations challenging the adequacy of the agencies’ searches for responsive records.
July 25, 2025
Wash. Lawyers' Comm. for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming summary judgment for the government, finding that: (1) Federal Bureau of Prisons did not have an unlawful policy of practice of delaying FOIA responses, crediting agency’s good-faith efforts to improve processing times and manage high request volumes; and (2) rejecting appellant’s argument that disciplinary and educational records should be released through an expedited process like medical records under the Privacy Act.
Bender v. DOT (S.D. Cal.) -- granting the government's motion for partial summary judgment because plaintiff failed to properly exhaust the administrative remedies for three of his FOIA claims; specifically, plaintiff did not submit a valid appeal for his 2019 request, offered no evidence that appealing part of a 2022 request would have been futile, and incorrectly argued that a third request was merely a clarification rather than a formal submission.
Am. Wild Horse Campaign v. Bureau of Land Mgmt. (D.D.C.) (Mag. J.) -- reporting and recommending that plaintiff was both eligible for and entitled to attorney’s fees, noting that the agency changed its position on whether plaintiff’s request was reasonably described and released additional documents only after litigation commenced and the court had denied agency’s motion to dismiss; further finding that plaintiff’s billing rates were reasonable, but that several categories of billed hours—particularly those spent on post-production settlement negotiations and "fees-on-fees" work—were excessive and should be reduced.
Haleem v. DOD (D.D.C.) -- granting government’s motion for reconsideration concerning 17 pages containing “inscrutable code,” because the government’s supplemental declarations established that the code “can be deciphered by foreign intelligence actors or cyber criminals and used to evade DOD investigations, thus qualifying the pages to be withheld under Exemption 7(E).”
July 24, 2025
White v. Dep’t of Agric. (E.D. Okla.) — denying the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; holding the agency failed to demonstrate the adequacy of its search because its supporting affidavit was “conclusory” and did not “identify the agency’s search terms, the type of search performed, and d[id] not aver that all files likely to contain responsive materials were searched”; rejecting also the requester’s arguments on search adequacy and whether the term “present time” in the temporal scope of the request at issue meant “through the date of production,” as opposed to the “date of the FOIA request.”
July 23, 2025
Eddington v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — denying the requester’s motion for attorneys’ fees; holding the requester was not eligible to recover fees because he did not substantially prevail; noting the requester “failed to show that [the] alleged disparity” between the processing time for his request, and the average time for fully processing a request at DOJ’s National Security Division in 2019, “establish[ed] [that] DOJ ‘suddenly accelerated’ processing [on his request] because [he] filed suit.”
Gun Owners of Am., Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment and denying the requester’s motion to lift a “temporary protective order” as moot; holding the agency properly applied Exemptions 3, 6, 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E), which plaintiff did not contest; after distinguishing the D.C. Circuit’s recent opinion in Human Rights Defense Center v. U.S. Park Police, holding further that the court retained inherent equitable authority to prohibit the requester from further dissemination of “inadvertently disclosed” information “‘related to the FBI and ATF’s warrantless NICS Monitoring Program’” and protected by Exemptions 3 and 7(E).
Heritage Found. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment and holding that the agency conducted an adequate search; rejecting the requester’s argument that DOJ’s supporting declaration “lack[ed] sufficient specificity to establish that responsive data does not exist,” when the agency “would have [had] to sift through the available data, analyze it, drawn inferences from it, and create a new record” to fulfill the request; similarly rejecting the requester’s contention that the agency failed to inquire into where responsive data “‘may have already been compiled’ in some other form” because the hypothetical existence of such data was unsupported by any evidence.
Bothwell v. Dep’t of Justice (W.D. Okla.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding that the agency conducted an adequate search because “DOJ has set forth in adequate detail the methods used to search the electronic files, the search terms used, and the specific record systems searched,” and that the requester did “not suggest . . . other search terms, search methods, or alternative records systems”; holding further that the agency properly used Exemption 6 to withhold “personal information, including [a] social security number, date of birth, and addresses in . . . SF-50s”; declining to provide the requester with declaratory relief or to recognize a private right of action for monetary damages; notably, rejecting the government’s attempt to dismiss the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under FRCP 12(b)(1) on mootness grounds because the agency had provided all responsive records.
July 21, 2025
Ezeah v. Exec. Office for U.S. Att’ys. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s unopposed motion for summary judgment; holding the agency “partly carried” its burden to demonstrate it conducted a search reasonable calculated to locate responsive records, but that it left unaddressed several items of the request; granting the government the opportunity to “fill in holes” in its explanation of its searches before entering partial judgment in favor of the requester.
July 18, 2025
Proj. for Privacy & Surveillance v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that six intelligence agencies properly relied on Exemption 1 in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records regarding the “unmasking” or “upstreaming” of 48 then-current or former members of congressional intelligence committees; rejecting requester’s argument that agencies were required to search for records before issuing Glomar responses or that those responses did not meet the criteria of Executive Order 13,526 or Exemption 1.
Fouts v. Exec. Office for U.S. Attorneys (S.D.N.Y.) -- denying pro se plaintiff’s motion to reconsider court’s order transferring plaintiff’s case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, because plaintiff “failed to demonstrate that the Court overlooked any controlling law or factual matter”; noting that plaintiff did not reside in the Southern District of New York and his complaint did not indicated that the disputed records were situated there.
July 17, 2025
Brodsky v. FBI (7th Cir.) -- affirming district’s court decision that FBI properly relied on Exemptions 3, 6, 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E) to withhold certain records concerning requester’s status as a confidential informant, as well to support agency’s Glomar response; declining to change the Circuit’s standard of review in FOIA cases, which calls for de novo review as to whether there was “an adequate factual basis to make a legally sound decision,” and then clear error review of “the court’s conclusions that the documents were properly withheld or redacted under the exemptions”; rejecting requester’s argument that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024) affects the weight a court may give to declarations made by agency officials in a FOIA case.
Gage v. EEOC (9th Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that agency properly issued an Exemption 3 Glomar response and that requests for “Gage’s charge file . . . were moot because the EEOC produced all non-exempt documents; further ruling that district court did not abuse its discretion by denying discovery.
Carlborg v. Dep't of Navy (S.D. Cal.) -- in case concerning records of plaintiff’s involuntary discharge from the military, determining that: (1) plaintiff’s FOIA claims arising from one batch of requests were precluded under the doctrine of res judicata, but that other claims were not; and (2) government established that it performed adequate searches in response to plaintiff’s multiple requests, and that the Navy was not required to create screenshots of records already produced to plaintiff; and (3) government properly relied on Exemption 6 to withhold the names, social security numbers, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, military rank, and signatures of third parties and government employees
Moslem v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- denying pro se inmate’s recusal motion because plaintiff’s claims of bias merely boiled down to allegations of judicial mistakes, which falls short of the disqualification standard set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 455; ruling that plaintiff did not have standing to challenge Tax Division’s response to a request identified in plaintiff’s Complaint, because the request was not submitted by plaintiff or by anyone claiming it was submitted on plaintiff’s behalf; and denying plaintiff’s various other requests for relief on both procedural grounds and on the merits.
July 16, 2025
Kinnally v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (S.D. Cal.) -- dismissing case as moot because plaintiff’s complaint sought only to compel production of records, which the agency ultimately released after lawsuit was filed; noting that plaintiff’s failure to respond to agency’s motion further supported dismissal without prejudice and without leave to amend the complaint.
July 15, 2025
Brown v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.C. Cir.) — affirming the district court; holding that the FBI conducted an adequate search and properly interpreted a request for “witness accounts, narratives, or statements” to implicate, “in agency parlance,” only “formal witness interviews and memorialized FD-203 forms,” and not such materials as “records of 911 calls,” logs or recordings of “police radio communications,” or “raw recordings of witness interviews”; holding further that the FBI’s properly invoked Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(D); rejecting, specifically, the requester’s arguments that the agency had not satisfied the foreseeable-harm standard; finally, affirming the district court’s denial of in camera review.
July 14, 2025
Sharpe v. U.S. Fed. Highway Admin. (9th Cir.) (unpublished)— vacating the district court’s judgment, dismissing appeal as moot, and remanding the case because the agency produced over two thousand pages of documents during appeal after initially refusing to process the request for being too vague.
Wright v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for partial summary judgment in a case about records related to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System; concluding HHS and CDC conducted adequate searches because they were “conducted in good faith and target[ed] the record systems most likely to contain the requested information,” and even involved subject-matter “experts” to help “define search terms”; noting the agencies undertook supplemental search efforts, even though not required, thus demonstrating “responsiveness to [the requester’s] concerns”; accepting the government’s arguments that the requester had tried to expand his request by demanding “unrelated and unduly burdensome” additional searches for communications “with other government agencies and third parties”; reaffirming that “an agency satisfies its FOIA obligations when it provides requesters with information that is already publicly available, especially when the alternative would be to duplicate materials already accessible”; characterizing the requester’s arguments—including those related to searches of personal email accounts—as “mere speculation,” albeit “strongly worded”'; concluding further that the agencies properly withheld information under Exemptions 5 and 6 because the requester “has effectively waived any objection” and the agencies’ “justifications for withholding . . . are adequately supported.”
July 10, 2025
Becker v. Dep’t of the Navy (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the agency’s motion for summary judgment; concluding the Navy properly withheld material under Exemption 3, which was concurrently withheld under Exemptions 6 and 7(C), whose use was not challenged by the requester; deferring judgment on the propriety of the agency’s use of Exemptions 5 and 7(E) pending its reprocessing of certain records and, if needed, renewed summary judgment cross-motions.
Pearce v. Dep’t of the Army (D.D.C.) — granting the Army’s motion for summary judgment in a joint-FOIA/Privacy Act case concerning records of EEOC administrative proceedings; concluding, in relevant part, that the agency properly applied Exemption 5, in conjunction with the attorney-client, attorney work-product, and deliberative-process privileges, as well as Exemptions 7(C) and 7(D); holding the Army’s disclosure of certain privileged records during discovery in EEOC proceedings did not waive privilege for purposes of the FOIA; further holding the Army properly treated the requester’s own “summary judgment motion and certain deposition exhibits . . . [containing] information about a settlement proposal and draft settlement agreement” as protected by the deliberative-process privilege; recognizing the Exemption 7 threshold is met and that documents from EEOC administrative proceedings qualify as records compiled for “law enforcement” purposes; interestingly failing to offer any analysis on the Army’s satisfaction of the foreseeable-harm standard for all of the asserted statutory exemptions.
July 9, 2025
Jackson v. HHS (D. Nev.) -- setting aside its dismissal of plaintiff claim and reopening case for good cause, because plaintiff had filed an opposition to government’s motion to dismiss prior to court’s ruling and only one day after the filing deadline—which plaintiff reportedly misread.
July 8, 2025
Whitlock v. Dep’t of Def. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s motion for reconsideration and allowing the to reprocess records previously withheld on a categorical basis and ordered to be disclosed, but limiting reprocessing to the applicability of Exemptions 1, 3, 6, 7(C), and 7(E); concluding that one of the D.C. Circuit’s “narrow exceptions” to the general rule requiring assertion of “all FOIA exemptions at the same time” applied here because “the government failed to press additional exemptions in their summary judgment papers due to attorney error; explaining the agency would not, however, be allowed to make new Exemption 5 or Exemption 7(D) arguments (except with respect to the identity of a confidential source) because it has “not sufficiently explained how releas[e] . . . would compromise national security, infringe on third parties’ privacy or safety, or otherwise be harmful or unfair.”
July 3, 2025
Ctr. for Immigration Studies v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the plaintiff’s cross-motion for summary judgment; holding that HHS failed to conduct an adequate search for records reflecting the “zip code for each sponsor associated with [any] unaccompanied alien child that the agency could not reach after [a] ‘safety and wellbeing call’”; surmising, based on media reports, that the agency, after liberally construing the request and considering the plaintiff’s clarification (i.e., “additional ‘helpful’ information”), should have “produced a list of tens of thousands [of] zip code, including the same zip code multiple times when more than one child potentially resided within that area”; rejecting HHS’s alternative “hypothetical” invocation of Exemption 6 and casting doubt on whether it could actually succeed.
July 1, 2025
Della Rocca v. U.S. Postal Serv. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning records about the shipping of election ballots, granting the agency’s renewed motion for summary judgment; holding that the Postal Service’s search was reasonable; noting the agency’s supplemental declaration addressed “gaps the Court identified in its previous order,” such as the agency’s “clarified understanding of the scope” of the requests at issue, and its search of various computer systems; describing the plaintiff’s counter-arguments as amounting to “pure speculation” about the existence of additional records; noting also that the plaintiff could not demonstrate how the agency supposedly “acted in bad faith.”
June 30, 2025
Animal Partisan v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.D.C.) — denying requester’s fee motion; concluding that, while the requester “has established its eligibility for attorneys’ fees and costs [under the “catalyst” theory] . . . it has not demonstrated that it is entitled to such fees”; noting the “information obtained” by the requester “appears only marginally” likely to benefit the public because “many of the records sought were likely already in the public domain”; noting further that the FBI “was neither recalcitrant in its opposition nor obdurate in its behavior,” “promptly turned over the requested records” after the lawsuit was filed, and even conducted supplemental searches upon request; concluding, on the whole, that the agency “had a reasonable basis for initially withholding . . . under Exemption 7(A),” too.
FOIAConsciousness.com v. NARA (N.D. Cal.) -- holding that NARA did not violate FOIA by requiring plaintiff to submit proof of permission from a copyright holder—in this case, the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas— before facilitating the copying of the copyrighted Zapruder film “because such copies, of which NARA facilitates the reproduction, are not “readily reproducible” in the absence of permission; further, reasoning that plaintiff “did not identify anything in FOIA or the caselaw to indicate that Congress intended a records designation to trump copyrights held by third parties,” and that plaintiff “also did not say why FOIA would require agencies to produce copies in a manner that would open them up to liability under the copyright laws.”
June 27, 2025
S. Envtl. Law Ctr. v. Tenn. Valley Auth. (E.D. Tenn.) -- questionably holding that plaintiff lacked standing to pursue FOIA claim because it failed to present sufficient evidence of its purported informational injury, inexplicably relying on U.S. Supreme Court’s non-FOIA decision in Transunion LLC v. Ramirez.
June 24, 2025
Levitt v. IRS (N.D. Ala.) -- deciding that: (1) IRS reasonably interpreted plaintiff’s request for “any and all correspondence related to the FPA [Final Partnership Adjustment] sent to both the Taxpayer and PR [Partnership Representative]” as seeking only correspondence actually sent to both parties; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that the phrase “sent to both the Taxpayer and PR” was merely a descriptor for the FPA itself, reasoning that plaintiff had already defined the term “FPA” earlier in the request; further noting that plaintiff could simply submit a new request if he wanted internal agency correspondence about the FPA; and (2) the fact that agency’s FOIA production did not include any records “that tend to prove or disprove that the Taxpayer or PR received the FPA,” as plaintiff requested, did not undermine the adequacy of IRS’s search.
June 23, 2025
Office of the Fed. Pub. Def. v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) U.S. Marshals Service was required to release details about its trial-related security measures because it made “no effort to explain how their withholdings fall within the textual limit of being techniques, procedures, or guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions” under Exemption 7(E); and (2) USMS properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold an internal email because it involved judgment-based selection of facts concerning security staffing; further finding that USMS met foreseeable harm requirement by explaining that disclosure would chill future discussions about judicial security operations.
June 20, 2025
Javino v. Hurd (D.D.C.) -- concluding that FBI properly relied on Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(D) to withhold the identity of an individual who plaintiff believes provided false information to the FBI about plaintiff’s actions at the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2021; granting summary judgment to the government regarding its search and its withholding of other requested records, because plaintiff failed to object.
June 18, 2025
Sanchez Mora v. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C) — in a case transferred from the Northern District of California, granting the requesters’ motion for reconsideration to reinstate their claim against the Department of Homeland Security; accepting the requesters’ argument that “the transferring court ‘erred in construing FOIA’ too narrowly, as allowing a lawsuit only against ‘the component agency that received the records request’ and not the parent agency of that component”; noting to conclude “otherwise makes little practical difference and would incentivize the submission of duplicate FOIA requests to both parent agencies and any component that might retain responsive records, with concomitant inefficiencies and agency burdens in tracking and processing such duplicate requests.”
June 13, 2025
Walsh v. Dep't of the Navy (D.S.D.) -- ruling that agency performed adequate search for disciplinary records of two retired Marine Corps generals who allegedly attempted to murder plaintiff in 1985, noting that other courts had “time and time again” found those allegations “to be frivolous.”
Doe v. Burrows (D.D.C.) -- denying pro se plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration and upholding its prior decision that plaintiff could not proceed under a pseudonym in his FOIA case against EEOC and DHS over unfulfilled FOIA requests.
Musgrave v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) -- denying the cross-motions for summary judgment “because they rest on a declaration that addresses the burdens imposed by responding to Parts 4 and 5 of the FOIA request”; noting that, as plaintiff has withdrawn part five of its request, “[t]he court is thus left to speculate about the burdens imposed by Part 4 only”; seemingly granting the agency leave to file ex parte details about “the precise number of employees” at the “Washington and San Francisco field offices,” given plaintiff’s suggestion that “each employee individually . . . conduct email searches.”
Ferrera Parra v. Judicial Conference of the U.S. (D.D.C.) -- dismissing without prejudice a pro se plaintiff’s complaint and noting that, inter alia, its FOIA claims remained “underdeveloped”; noting that, while plaintiff “contends . . . ‘[he] submitted multiple lawful FOIA requests’” to the Marshals Service, those requests remain unidentified “in his pleading” and any copies “peppered into his flood of exhibits” are “unmanageable to ascertain”; concluding that “any FOIA claims are deeply conflated with plaintiff’s myriad other grievances.”
June 12, 2025
Huddleston v. FBI (E.D. Tex.) -- denying without prejudice plaintiff’s motion to substitute a third party to continue FOIA lawsuit because plaintiff did not mention third party by name or his purported interest in the requested information “throughout the over four years of litigation,” nor did plaintiff produce evidence that the third party had accepted the proposed substitution as party plaintiff.
June 11, 2025
Viola v. DOJ (D.D.C.) —determining that: (1) FBI performed adequate search for certain records concerning an FBI informant; (2) FBI properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to withhold identifying information about FBI’s special agents and professional staff, as well as other third party individuals; (3) information provided by FBI’s source was impliedly confidential and properly withheld under Exemption 7(D); (4) FBI properly withheld “non-public details about its storage device and identification number used to collect investigatory evidence” under Exemption 7(E); (5) FBI’s categorical withholding of an “informant file” consisting of evidentiary/investigative and administrative materials was proper under Exemption 7(D); and (6) FBI met FOIA’s foreseeable harm and segregability requirements.
June 10, 2025
Grey v. Alfonso-Royals (4th Cir.) -- affirming district court's decision granting USCIS summary judgment and ruling that the agency properly redacted training materials under Exemption 7(E); notably, rejecting requester’s argument that Exemption 7(E) required a showing of risk of circumvention of the law for techniques or procedures, citing “basic rules of grammar and punctuation”; further, dismissing requester’s challenge to a provisional sealing and protective order, noting it was rendered moot by the district court's final ruling that authorized the redactions under FOIA.
Rudometkin v. United States (D.C. Cir.) -- reversing in part and granting in part district court’s decision concerning records related to requester’s military conviction, holding that: (1) U.S. Department of Defense properly relied on Exemption 5, rejecting requester’s argument that a “government misconduct” exception exists; (2) foreseeable harm was “manifest” due to the sensitive nature of disputed records, namely selecting a chief trial judge; (3) both the government and district court failed to adequately analyze whether non-exempt, reasonably segregable information could be released without causing harm; and (4) upholding the denial of requester’s motion to amend his complaint, because the FOIA claim he sought to add was being litigated in a separate, active case.
June 4, 2025
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. CDC (D.D.C.) -- denying plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction requiring HHS to expedite processing of plaintiff’s requests concerning CDC’s FOIA operations; reasoning, in part, that plaintiff would not suffer irreparable harm because the requested records were “not so integral to a time-sensitive debate that they will lose their value without expedited processing and production.”
June 2, 2025
Pomares v. U.S. Dep't of Veterans Affairs (S.D. Cal.) -- on reversal and remand from the Ninth Circuit, ruling that: (1) agency properly reprocessed email messages and released certain names that had been redacted under Exemption 6; (2) agency properly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) to withhold names and personal information of third parties that appeared in Inspector General interview transcripts, which agency had previously withheld in full pursuant to Exemption 7(E); (3) agency failed to sufficiently demonstrate that it processed all exhibits referenced in the interview transcripts; and (4) court would not consider two new arguments raised for the first time in plaintiff’s reply brief, nor would it grant plaintiff’s discovery request.
May 29, 2025
Biear v. Attorney Gen. (3rd Cir.) (per curiam) -- affirming district court’s decision to deny pro se requester’s motion to reopen FOIA case and concluding that that FBI and Criminal Division complied with district court’s orders to release supplemental information material.
May 27, 2025
Libarov v. ICE (7th Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision and holding that: (1) requester was not entitled to a declaratory judgment that ICE violated FOIA for missing statutory response deadline; (2) district court did not clearly err in ruling—after in camera review—that Exemption 7(A) protected investigatory information concerning requester’s sham marriage; and (3) requester could not maintain an Administrative Procedure Act claim against ICE for an alleged policy of delaying FOIA responses, because FOIA provided an adequate remedy.
Alper v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) FBI could not rely on Exemption 7(A) to withhold in full all records concerning plaintiff, a death-row inmate who murdered a sheriff’s deputy in 1995, because agency failed to show how disclosure of records would compromise government’s position at two pending enforcement proceedings; (2) FBI properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to withhold identities of FBI personnel, other law enforcement personnel, and civilian third parties; (3) FBI did not show that Exemption 7(D) protected information about cooperative efforts provided by a foreign law enforcement agency more than 30 years ago; (4) FBI properly invoked Exemption 7(E) to withheld identities of investigative databases it used, but a discrepancy with agency’s Vaughn Index precluded use of same exemption to withhold documents requesting assistance from foreign law enforcement agency; and (5) FBI properly invoked Exemption 5’s attorney-client privilege to withhold communications between DOJ counsel and an FBI special agent regarding legal guidance.
May 15, 2025
Tovar v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s claim against the Drug Enforcement Administration for access to records about himself on the ground that he failed to appeal the DEA’s denial before filing suit; rejecting as irrelevant the plaintiff’s argument that the DEA’s final response was untimely, as the agency cured any delay by issuing a final determination before the lawsuit was filed.
May 6, 2025
Conflict Kinetics, LLC v. Program Exec. Office—Simulation, Training, & Instrumentation (E.D. Va.) -- granting on mootness grounds Defense Department component’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claim that disputed government’s failure to respond at all, because DOD issued a final response two days after plaintiff filed its lawsuit; denying government’s motion to dismiss as moot count plaintiff’s claim objecting to records withheld under various exemptions, because that claim “is not an issue of this Court's jurisdiction, but one to be decided on the merits.”
May 5, 2025
Texas Pub. Policy Found. v. U.S. Dep’t of State (5th Cir.) -- reversing lower court in a 2-1 decision and holding that Exemption 6 did not protect the names and email addresses of rank-and-file State Department employees (i.e., non-policy makers) who were involved in developing President Biden’s emissions reduction target after rejoining the Paris Agreement; the majority found that the Department’s fears about potential harassment, doxing, or unwanted attention were not substantiated with credible evidence; that there was a significant public interest in understanding how government policy is formed, even when those involved are not senior officials; and that work-issued emails did not merit the same privacy protections as personal information; the dissent opined that Exemption 6 protected the names and email addresses of rank-and-file employees because their participation in “a high-profile and controversial matter” could expose them to harassment, whereas the rescinded nature of the emissions pledge weakened public interest in disclosure.
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- ruling that DHS properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to withhold the identity of a Secret Service agent who had communicated with the founder of Oath Keepers concerning its potential presence at a September 2020 presidential rally; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that the communications at issue were created for political purposes rather than to fulfill the agency’s law enforcement mission; further, in weighing the agent’s privacy interests against any public interest in disclosure, the court rejected plaintiff’s argument that the agent acted improperly or that disclosure would shed additional light on Secret Service’s operations.
May 1, 2025
Bell v. FBI (S.D. Ill.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s claim because she failed to exhaust her administrative remedies when she filed suit without first administratively appealing FBI’s timely determination (finding no responsive records).
Apr. 29, 2025
Protect the Public’s Trust v. Nat’l Labor Relations Bd. (D.D.C.) — in a case involving the disclosure of an ethics memo concerning potential recusal of NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox from decision-making on the Board’s February 26, 2020 “Joint Employer” rule, granting in part the requester’s motion for summary judgment; holding the agency failed to “sufficiently establish[] that” portions of the memo are protected by Exemption 5 and the attorney work-product privilege, but ordering in camera review before any final disclosure determination; noting the disputed question of whether the ethics memo was created in anticipation of future litigation, rather than in response to a request for ethics advice, and explaining the agency’s supporting declarations did not consider “how the redacted portions” would have differed if they “merely sought recusal guidance,” contrary to the government’s position; recognizing, for example, that NLRB members have an “independent ethical obligation to seek . . . [recusal] guidance independent of any anticipated litigation, and nothing in the unredacted portion of the . . . Memo appears to reference litigation strategies or defenses.”
Ferrera Parra v. Judicial Conference of the United States (D.D.C.) — dismissing, in relevant part, a pro se complaint that “approaches stating a FOIA claim” because “it is unmanageable to discern the necessary supporting facts and details relating thereto, particularly because they are deeply conflated with plaintiff’s myriad other grievances.”
Apr. 25, 2025
Accuracy in Media v. Cent. Intelligence Agency (D.C. Cir.) — in a 21-year-old case about records of American prisoners-of-war and others missing from action in the Vietnam War, reversing the district court and remanding; concluding the CIA’s “truncated search terms could not reasonably have been expected to capture relevant records” due to “notable omissions,” an “unexplained mismatch” between the “identified search terms” and “the scope of the FOIA request,” and failure to explain why the use of “singular or plural forms” of the employed terms was irrelevant insofar as “the use of one [might] exclude[] the other”; noting, “[t]he CIA’s worry about further narrowing the search is no answer to the problem of it not being broad enough to begin with,” especially since the agency “failed to adequately explain why fewer search terms would yield more results when, in this case, logic suggests the opposite is true.”
Apr. 22, 2025
Am. Oversight v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- granting government’s summary judgment motion and holding that pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in GTE Sylvania, Inc. v. Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., DOJ properly withheld Volume Two of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 2025 investigatory report because another federal district court has barred its disclosure; rejecting plaintiff’s arguments that the government was required to identify statutory exemptions; that DOJ’s support for the injunction rendered GTE Sylvania inapplicable; and that the court that issued the injunction lacked jurisdiction to maintain it.
Apr. 21, 2025
Lenahan v. HHS (N.D. Cal.) -- ruling that: (1) agency performed adequate search for various contractual records pertaining to agency’s purchase of antibiotics for the Strategic National Stockpile; (2) agency properly relied on Exemption 3 in conjunction with 41 U.S.C. § 4702(b) to redact successful bidder’s proposal, which had not been incorporated into the awarded contract; and (3) agency’s offer to provide an informal Vaughn Index to plaintiff during the meet-and-confer process was insufficient to justify remaining withholdings under Exemptions 3 and 5.
Apr. 17, 2025
Am. Wild Horse Campaign v. U.S Bureau pf Land Mgmt. (D.D.C.) -- concluding that BLM’s search for records relating to the Rock Springs Grazing Association was adequate “in interpreting plaintiff’s FOIA requests, the locations to be searched, search terms and methods used (with one exception), and the selection of custodians (with one exception).”
Apr. 11, 2025
Outside Legal Counsel PLC v. Transp. Sec. Admin. (E.D. Mich.) -- denying pro se plaintiff-attorney’s request for $402 in litigation costs because TSA showed that it meaningfully responded to plaintiff’s request once received and plaintiff’s lawsuit did not change the agency’s position or cause the release of records; declining to opine on whether the Sixth Circuit correctly decided that pro se FOIA plaintiffs who are attorneys are barred from collecting attorney’s fees.
Apr. 9, 2025
Democracy Forward Found. v. OMB (D.D.C.) -- denying plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction that sought expedited processing of reduction-in-force and reorganization plans maintained by OMB and OPM, as well as production of “approved” plans by a date certain; reasoning that plaintiff failed to show it was entitled to the “extraordinarily rare” remedy because, among other things, there was no “imminent event” indicating that the requested records would become stale if released though the normal FOIA process.
Apr. 8, 2025
Greenspan v. EOUSA (D.D.C.) -- in case seeking investigative records about named individuals who operated a heroin ring in Chicago in the 1990s, ruling that: (1) DEA was precluded from using Glomar response regarding one named individual because DOJ publicly filed an IRS affidavit in a forfeiture matter that expressly acknowledged DEA’s investigation of same individual; (2) both the DEA and FBI were precluded from using Glomar responses with respect to a second named individual (currently Nigeria’s president), because the above-referenced IRS affidavit acknowledged that that individual was criminally investigated by those agencies, among others; and (3) CIA’s Glomar response concerning the Nigerian president was not waived by the presence of documents in the agency’s FOIA Reading Room that generally addresses Nigeria’s involvement with heroin narcotrafficking during the mid-1980s.
Apr. 4, 2025
Sanders v. FBI (W.D. Wis.) -- concluding that: (1) FBI’s search for records concerning plaintiff was inadequate because the agency failed to explain why it was reasonable to search only its Central Records System; it neglected to use reasonable variations of plaintiff’s name; and it neglected to explain why its initial search yielded no records and its second (seemingly identical) search located three pages; and (2) FBI did not adequately justify its Exemption 7(C) Glomar response to portion of plaintiff’s request that sought records mentioning plaintiff and various third parties, and remarking that it wasn’t clear why redactions wouldn’t sufficiently protect third parties’ privacy interests.
Mar. 31, 2025
Campaign Legal Ctr. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning records about the addition of a “citizenship question” to the census, granting in part and denying in part the parties’ renewed cross-motions for summary judgment on remand; holding that a “10-page email thread between DOJ, Commerce, and White House staff” was properly withheld under Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege, despite post-dating the decision to add the citizenship question to the census, because it was “‘not so much [intended] to explain the agency’s already-decided policy,’ but an ‘iterative weighing of legal and policy concerns’”; holding further that records reflecting discussions about a response to the Washington Post, draft correspondence with a Member of Congress, and inter-agency correspondence were all similarly protected by the deliberative-process privilege; declining, however, to accept the adequacy of the agency’s arguments for the privilege as applied to internal e-mail regarding the census and American Community Survey; noting the agency’s declarations do not “describe the withheld emails with sufficient particularity,” and “[a] one-paragraph explanation without detail, or the document itself [submitted for in camera review], is insufficient”; finally, holding that, while the agency could technically satisfy the requirements to withhold draft responses to interrogatories from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under Exemption 5, it had failed to meet the foreseeable-harm standard by not connecting “two comments . . . about two lines of a 24-page” document to the asserted “broader harm of weakened inter agency relationships” or the internal “chill” of agency deliberations.
Webb v. Office of Mgmt. & Budget (D.D.C.) — in a case brought by a “highly vexatious [pro se] litigant,” granting, in relevant part, the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that OMB conducted an adequate search, and rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments that the agency improperly “characterized his FOIA request as implicating classified records” and failed to locate “records indicating that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory”; noting the plaintiff’s “unsubstantiated assertion that there must be records indicating that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory is the kind of ‘purely speculative claim[] about the existence and discoverability of other documents’ that cannot rebut the presumption of good faith accorded to detailed agency affidavits describing a search.”
Soliman v. Threat Screening Ctr. (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding that the Threat Screening Center (formerly, the Terrorist Screening Center) is a subcomponent of the FBI’s National Security Branch, rather than its own “agency,” and therefore the plaintiff failed to exhaust administrative remedies by filing an appeal challenging the adequacy of the agency’s search for responsive records; notably, the FBI did not raise any specific exhaustion argument in its motion for summary judgement, but only as a defense in its answer.
Aviation Servs. LLC v. Small Bus. Admin.; Russo. v. Small Bus. Admin. (N.D. Cal.) — in a pair of consolidated cases concerning the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (“EIDL”) program, granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; holding, firstly, that the agency’s failure to provide timely determinations did not, in and of itself, provide grounds for any declaratory or injunctive relief, particularly since the plaintiffs failed to plead any “policy or practice” claim; also holding that the agency, in large part, conducted an adequate search, but reserving judgment as to certain aspects of the reasonableness of the search methodology due to deficient supporting declarations; directing the agency to provide more detail about certain search terms and to run some supplemental searches; concluding the agency properly withheld case file notes under Exemption 5, in conjunction with the deliberative-process privilege, and that it properly withheld the bank account numbers of individual EIDL applicants under Exemption 6; yet also ruling the agency could not use Exemption 6 to withhold either the names and addresses of loan program participants, or the bank account numbers of “non-personal entities,” i.e., any “company or business entity”; rejecting the agency’s categorical use of Exemption 6 to withhold third-party EIDL application information, including aggregate statistical data, because the agency had not made the necessary showing that “all responsive information” refers to “individually-owned or closely-held businesses” or would otherwise be personally identifying; concluding the agency correctly used Exemption 4 to withhold a company’s “confidential unit pricing”; finally, rejecting the requesters’ “reading-room” claims for failure to meet the “threshold” requirement of describing what records have not been made available under 552(a)(2)(B)-(C) in the agency’s FOIA library.
Jewish Legal News, Inc. v. Dep’t of Educ. (N.D. Cal.) — granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; holding the requester lacked standing to challenge “certain redactions and withholdings in the FOIA response that were originally made in response to previous FOIA requests” and only “[re-]produced here in response” to an item of the request at issue; holding also that the agency properly applied Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege, except with respect to emails that reflect communications with persons using “accounts outside the government”; rejecting the agency’s contention that such non-government accounts may have been White House employees as unsupported by adequate specificity in its Vaughn index; concluding the agency properly applied Exemptions 6 and 7(A); rejecting the plaintiff’s policy-and-practice claim predicated on the agency having taken “several months to process and produce documents on a rolling bases,” and explaining that productions are distinct from a “determination,” which is what must be provided within a specified timeframe; denying without prejudice the requester’s motion to the extent it alleged a failure to conduct an adequate search or to reasonably segregate non-exempt material from the records at issue.
Mar. 30, 2025
Farris v. Garland (D.D.C.) -- determining that: (1) the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys conducted a reasonable search for certain records related to plaintiff’s conviction for drug trafficking, and it had no obligation to obtain records maintained by other federal or local agencies; (2) government properly withheld certain information from investigative “DEA 6 Reports” pursuant to Exemptions 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E).
Mar. 28, 2025
Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Forest Serv. (D.D.C.) -- finding that: (1) federal contractor’s appraisal of a land exchange between the government and defendant-intervenor, a private mining company, qualified as an “agency record” because the agency “constructively controlled” the appraisal based on the four-factor test set forth in Burka v. HHS, 87 F.3d 508 (D.C. Cir. 1996); using the same test, finding that the contractor’s documents containing data underlying the appraisal were not agency records; (2) agency justified withholding information that would result in foreseeable economic harm to defendant-intervenor, but offered only inadmissible hearsay as to whether withheld information that would result in foreseeable harms to the appraiser and third-party experts’ business interests; (3) agency properly invoked Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold the appraisal, summary, and technical report as pre-decisional and deliberative, but rejecting the reasonableness of the harms foreseen by the agency; and (4) agency’s segregability analysis was insufficient because the agency inconsistently processed an appraisal summary and a technical report.
Mar. 26, 2025
Energy Pol’y Advocates v. Sec. & Exch. Comm’n (D.D.C.) — granting, in part, the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding the agency properly used Exemption 5, in conjunction with the deliberative-process privilege, to withhold calendar entries of a former SEC Chairman; yet concluding that, because many entries in the agency’s Vaughn index lacked adequate specificity and failed to “identify the subject of policy under consideration and instead refer[red] only to policymaking in general,” the agency had not met its burden to justify the withholding of certain e-mail communications between the White House, former SEC Chairman, and senior agency officials; ordering in camera review of the e-mail records; deferring consideration of the agency’s satisfaction of the foreseeable-harm standard for the e-mails, but holding the agency’s argument vis-à-vis the calendar entries was adequate.
Bader Family Found. v. Equal Emp’t Opportunity Comm’n (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and holding various parts of plaintiff’s request were “reasonably described”; explaining two of the request items in dispute “are not vague and have only one reasonable interpretation,” the agency “has not put forward a sufficiently detailed declaration explaining why . . . [responsive] records are difficult to locate,” and “the agency’s declarations do not sufficiently explain how the post-search efforts . . . would be overly burdensome”; similarly, with respect to the third item in dispute, concluding the agency “can reasonably construe [it] without” further clarification or defined terms, it “cannot definitively say [based on the record] . . . that searching for . . . text messages would be unreasonably burdensome,” and it “has not provided sufficient evidence” about “overly burdensome post-search efforts.”
Judicial Watch v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion to dismiss and holding that plaintiff’s request did not “‘reasonably describe’ the records sought” because it “uses vague words and descriptions,” including the phrase “all records related to”; emphasizing, at the same time, that “[t]here is no bright-line rule barring FOIA requesters from using the phrase “related to,” and a court’s analysis must focus on “whether the request is otherwise so ‘unusually specific’ that it still manages to satisfy FOIA’s reasonable-description requirement”; noting the plaintiff’s request “lacks any custodial limitation and does not specify the type of records sought”; querying “what . . . [the] other ‘related’ records [are] that the agency must look for if the categories of records identified in the latter part of the request are not sufficient.”
Mar. 25, 2025
Heritage Found. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case where the parties contested the proper meaning of the term “request,” denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and adopting the plaintiff’s proposed interpretation; holding that the FBI improperly split-up the plaintiff’s three-item FOIA request into three separate “requests”; explaining that, despite the agency having issued timely adverse determinations on two of the three parts, the requester was not required to exhaust administrative remedies as to those denials (and the separate denial of a fee waiver) before filing suit on the entirety of its submission after the agency failed to provide a timely response to the third item; suggesting that common usage, relevant caselaw, and statutory context all point to “request” best “refer[ring] to an overall FOIA submission,” rather than individual parts of a multi-item “submission”; noting that, while FOIA provides explicit authority to aggregate or consolidate distinct requests, there is no mention of splitting-up a request; expressing skepticism towards the agency’s contention that ruling for the plaintiff would “allow requesters to strategically circumvent the administrative appeal process.”
Evans v. Cent. Intelligence Agency (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment and holding that (1) the CIA’s search for records was adequate, (2) it properly issued a Glomar response pursuant to Exemption 1 as to a portion of the request, and (3) the plaintiff failed to exhaust administrative remedies with respect to the CIA’s use of Glomar with Exemption 3; explaining the plaintiff offered only “mere speculation” about “uncovered documents,” and the agency was not required to “list each system it searched, as opposed to the categories or types of systems”; rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments on the Glomar front, which focused on the level of detail in the agency’s supporting declaration; noting the requester failed to raise any objection in his appeal about the use of Exemption 3 with Glomar.
Mar. 24, 2025
Cohodes v. Dep’t of Justice (N.D. Cal.) — after awarding $180,808.50 in attorney’s fees, and following supplemental briefing precipitated by plaintiff having “estimated [certain] fees in the initial fees motion and document[ing] them only in the reply,” granting plaintiff an additional $73,948.95 “in fees for [its] fees motion” because “the hourly rates and hours spent are reasonable”; rejecting the government’s request to apply an across-the-board reduction; in total, awarding the requester $254,757.45.
Basey v. Dep’t of Justice (D. Alaska) — holding the agency conducted a reasonable search given the “context of [the requester’s] broad request”; describing the execution of searches in the components “most likely to have responsive records,” as well as the FBI’s separate search as recipient of a referral from EOUSA; noting the requester’s “allegations of bad faith rest on innuendo” and rest on “purely speculative claims about the existence and discoverability of other documents”; holding also that the government properly applied: (1) Exemption 3, in conjunction with the Child Victims’ & Child Witnesses’ Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3509(d), to withhold “‘interviews of a minor victim and explicit media involving’ child sexual abuse,” (2) Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege, together with Exemptions 6 and 7(C), to withhold records pertaining to interviews of victims abused by the requester, and (3) Exemption 7(E) to withhold records concerning the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team and Cyber Division’s Innocent Images National Initiative Program.
Mar. 21, 2025
Wiggins v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that the agency conducted an adequate search where it explained the custodial locations searched and the search terms utilized; noting that plaintiff proffered no “evidence” to support its “assertion of missing records”; holding also that the agency failed to offer adequate explanation for its use of Exemption 5 to withhold “undated and unsigned proposed amended jury instructions,” as well as other “unsigned” and either “undated” or “partially dated” litigation documents, including e-mail records between DOJ personnel “regarding the prosecution of plaintiff and the co-defendant’s criminal cases”; explaining that “EOUSA’s cryptic description” for the various “document[s] or categor[ies] of documents” does not establish their deliberative nature; noting also the agency’s “generic assertions of harm to internal discussions . . . parroted throughout the Vaugh index”; with respect to Exemption 7(C), holding that the agency properly redacted “the names and other identifying information of third-party individuals, including Eastern District employees, third-party witnesses, and co-defendants”; finally, concluding that “EOUSA has not properly justified withholding fifty-one sealed pages,” as it “offered no evidence”; directing the government to “supplement the record” and, if appropriate after re-processing, to “move again for dispositive relief.”
Ctr. for Medical Progress v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment and denying the plaintiff’s cross-motion; holding, firstly, that the agency “properly determined the scope of the plaintiff’s FOIA request,” which sought a “specific set of documents” about “grant applications,” especially in light of the plaintiff’s oral and written clarifications upon request from the agency, as well as its agreement to narrow its request post-submission; holding further that the agency conducted an adequate search; noting that “[b]eyond the contract records” that were properly beyond the scope of the request, “the plaintiff provide[d] no further basis to challenge the good faith basis” afforded to the agency’s supporting declarations.
Am. Property Locators, Inc. v. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C.) — in a case involving a commercial-use FOIA request for records about stale checks from CPB, granting the agency’s motion to dismiss and approving its inclusion in a fee estimate of expenses related to carrying out the “business submitter process”; explaining that CBP maintains a special process for notifying “submitters” of “commercial information” so that they can object to disclosure of their information under the FOIA, and that the agency has treated “Limited Payability (stale dated check) records” as triggering this “process”; declining to adopt the government’s recommendation to either apply arbitrary-and-capricious review or Auer deference in lieu of the FOIA’s default de novo review standard; holding that CPB provided a “‘reasonable, non-obstructionist explanation’ . . . for applying the business submitter process” based on its published regulations, and that it appropriately assumed responsive records would “encompass emails between CBP and business submitters regarding the original commercial transaction, the status of payee checks, the occurrence of novel financial transactions, and/or bank account information”; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that any possible exceptions to the business-submitter process applied; noting the “process itself is reasonable” as it “‘give[s] effect to Exemption 4,” among other things; finding no basis in the record to doubt the actual fee estimate of $738; finally, concluding that the requester failed to exhaust by “pay[ing] the required fees before suing the challenge the substance of [its] FOIA request.”
Rhodes v. Internal Revenue Serv. (N.D. Ala.) — granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative remedies; rejecting the requester’s apparent argument, based on the language of his complaint, that “there were no administrative remedies to be exhausted”; rejecting also the requester’s suggestion that the IRS’s determination letter was “insufficient to trigger a duty to exhaust his claims” because it “did not communicate the scope of the documents it withheld” by including a “privilege log.”
Jackson v. Internal Revenue Serv. (N.D. Ala.) — in an almost word-for-word, identical opinion to that published above in Rhodes, granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.
Cahill v. Dep’t of Commerce (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for mootness where a pro se requester admitted the agency “finally complied” with his request prior to filing suit; denying also the requester’s motion for costs because the “Department turned over the video [at issue] without a court order, written agreement, or consent decree,” the record was “outside the scope of [the requester’s] FOIA request,” and “the Department would have been able to meritoriously defend its denial of . . . [the] request by arguing that [the requester] had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies.”
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case seeking access to records related to the “now-closed criminal investigation of former Congressman Matt Gaetz,” in which the requester also pleaded policy-and-practice claims related to the use of Glomar responses and categorical withholdings under Exemptions 6 and 7(C), granting in party and denying in part the government’s motion to dismiss; with respect to allegations about an unlawful Glomar-response policy, holding that CREW can appropriately “aggregate” evidence about the behavior of multiple “components within a larger agency” to sustain its claim; noting, in that respect, how “CREW has identified six instances of potentially violative conduct across four DOJ components,” that this “is numerically sufficient to show a pattern for purposes of a motion to dismiss,” that there is sufficient relation between the examples to suggest a “consistent policy,” and that CREW has otherwise “plead sufficient facts to suggest” the ostensible policy is unlawful; holding also, by contrast, that CREW’s policy-or-practice claim about Exemption 6/7(C) responses must be dismissed because DOJ’s “responses to CREW’s three requests were not uniform,” and therefore undercut any theory that they did not reflect “case-by-case analysis.”
Mar. 20, 2025
Simmons v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — denying an aggrieved, former State Department employee’s motion for attorney fees in light of her failure to demonstrate under the “catalyst theory” how she “substantially prevailed,” and was therefore eligible for fee recovery; specifically, noting the requester failed to show “this litigation caused [the agency] to comply with her FOIA and Privacy Act requests”; noting also the agency had “immediately started processing records and made several pre-litigation productions”; relatedly concluding the requester “fail[ed] to rebuff evidence that [any] delayed ‘disclosure result[ed] not from the suit but from delayed administrative processing.’”
Leopold v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — on remand from the D.C. Circuit for a “third round of summary judgment,” denying the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment regarding withholding under Exemption 8 of a redacted version of an independent monitor’s report detailing HSBC’s compliance with a deferred prosecution agreement, specifically with respect to the justification for continued non-disclosure under the foreseeable-harm standard; ruling that, while “Exemption 8’s broader protections . . . related to financial institutions apply,” in camera review of the monitor report is needed to resolve the case; noting, inter alia, that another judge “found not harm in disclosing a redacted version,” and that DOJ’s own filings suggest “portions of the . . . [r]eport might be . . . released with minimal risk of harm.”
Crandell v. Nat’l Archives & Records Admin. (4th Cir.) (unpublished) — affirming dismissal of FOIA lawsuit, where the requester failed to exhaust administrative remedies and failed also to demonstrate that the records he had requested “still existed”; modifying the district court’s ruling, however, by ordering the dismissal to be without prejudice.
Mar. 19, 2025
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. U.S. DOGE Serv. (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion for reconsideration of a prior preliminary-injunction ruling that held U.S. DOGE Service was likely an “agency” for FOIA purposes, in large part, because the government’s “arguments could all have been raised during the last round of briefing” and “none of them provides a basis for reconsideration”; acknowledging, nonetheless, that “it would be preferable . . . to review the question of whether [DOGE] is subject to the FOIA on the merits based on a more complete record,” and therefore inviting the requester to file a motion for limited discovery under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d); expressing doubt that the irreparable-harm analysis underlying the Court’s preliminary injunction ruling was erroneous; continuing to point to public statements by President Trump and Elon Musk, as well as press reports, that cast doubt on the government’s various factual claims.
U.S. Right to Know v. Dep’t of Def. (N.D. Cal.) — granting in party and denying in part the plaintiff’s motion for attorney’s fees; noting the government did “not contest that Plaintiff is eligible to receive an award of fees and costs”; on the question of entitlement, concluding that: (1) the public interest favors the award, as the records, which pertain to COVID-19, could help reveal “‘possible politicization of agency decisionmaking’”; (2) the plaintiff, as a non-profit organization, had no commercial interest in the responsive records; and (3) the agency acted unreasonably by failing to comply with statutory deadlines, or to communicate with the plaintiff “for over two years until after suit was commenced,” and by significantly over-redacting the responsive records in the first instance without any “colorable basis under the law”; ultimately awarding “$74,312.88 in attorneys fees and $688.96 in costs,” or roughly $10,000 less than what plaintiff asked for, after rejecting recovery for: (1) certain administrative tasks, like fixing access problems to USAfx or other “purely clerical tasks,” (2) internal attorney communications that were vaguely described in the ’ fee motion and supporting declarations, (3) pro hac vice fees, and (4) costs related to “expert declarations.”
Mar. 18, 2025
Berlant v. U.S. Election Comm’n (D. Oregon) -- denying pro se plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration because it was filed one day too late under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), and her simultaneously filed appeal with the Ninth Circuit deprived the court of jurisdiction to entertain plaintiff’s motion under Rule 60; alternatively, plaintiff’s motion failed because she identified no new evidence, clear error, or intervening change in the law.
Emesowum v. NSA (D. Md.) -- in case concerning existence of video showing vehicles arriving at agency’s front gate, denying agency’s motion to dismiss because NSA had not (yet) provided adequate documentation to support its contention that the video was “routinely deleted before the NSA could practicably retrieve it.”; further, dismissing plaintiff’s claim for punitive damages and dismissing an individual NSA employee as a party.
Mar. 14, 2025
Finders Keepers USA, LLC v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — on renewed cross-motions for summary judgment, granting in part and denying in part each party’s motion; on the question of search adequacy, (1) finding that the FBI’s chosen search terms were “reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents,” (2) rejecting the agency’s cut-off date (i.e., the date of its initial search) as unreasonable because it “should have looked for records through the date of its second search,” and (3) again identifying deficiencies in the FBI’s averments that it searched all files likely to contain responsive material, given the facts of the case and prior proceedings; similarly ruling that the search for certain DVD videos was reasonable; deciding that “a genuine dispute of fact” exists as to whether the FBI was required to produce all versions of a particular operational plan; and, finally, rejecting once again the FBI’s invocation of Exemption 7(E) for failure to identify the risks of circumvention of the law, and for failure to satisfy the foreseeable-harm standard; ordering in camera review and further proceedings.
Francis v. Internal Revenue Serv. (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s combined motions to dismiss and for summary judgment; dismissing as moot several counts in the complaint because the IRS located responsive records and released them in full, and there was no further challenge to the adequacy of the relevant searches; concluding that, with respect to another count, the requester failed to exhaust administrative remedies by admittedly failing to file an appeal before initiating the lawsuit; rejecting another two counts as pertaining to improper or invalid FOIA requests that “sought information and not records”; and, finally, ruling the IRS conducted an adequate search for all remaining counts, and rejecting the requester’s arguments that the agency “acted in bad faith through its false and misleading representations.”
Tsai v. United States (D.D.C.) — in relevant part, granting the IRS’s motion for summary judgment and holding that the agency conducted an adequate search; noting an apparent “gap between what [the requester] had actually requested and what he . . . intended to request,” but accepting the agency’s arguments that post-submission modification or enlargement of the scope of the request was improper given its “four-corners”; declining to strike the agency’s supporting declaration for lack of personal knowledge because, “[i]n the FOIA context, ‘declarants are not required to have personal knowledge of the search itself, but rather ‘personal knowledge of the procedures used in handling [a FOIA] request and familiarity with the documents in question.’”
White v. Dep’t of Agric. (E.D. Okla.) — denying the agency’s motion for summary judgment and rejecting the adequacy of its search for records about the Rural Development Division’s rental assistance program; explaining that, while the agency’s supporting declaration “indicates that all the records in USDA possession have been produced, it contains no averments pertaining to the agency’s search” methodology, including descriptions of search terms and the types of searches actually performed.
Mar. 11, 2025
Ctr. to Advance Sec. in Am. v. USAID (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s unopposed motion for a stay due to the “extremely limited” number of “USAID personnel available to work on Freedom of Information Act” matters—specifically, “three direct hire FOIA staff” and “nine institutional support contractors”; noting that USAID “cite[d] no authority in support of its request” for a stay, but understanding the request to arise under Open America; noting further that “the Court is skeptical that an agency can avoid its obligations under FOIA . . . by simply implementing a reduction-in-force . . . [or] more generally, by reducing the agency’s overall FOIA staff ‘by half,’” especially when there are no “external impediments to meeting the statutory requirements, such as a lack of funding from Congress or an unanticipated volume of requests that has overwhelmed the FOIA office”; warning that the stay is entered in large part because it is unopposed and “that this decision should not be understood to forecast how the Court is likely to resolve an opposed request for a stay under similar circumstances or a request by Plaintiff to lift the stay.”
Malik v. DHS (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the government’s motion for summary judgment, and denying the requester’s cross-motion; concluding, in large part, that the defendant-agencies conducted adequate searches for records concerning requester, notwithstanding the requester’s insistence they overlooked “materials which are known to exist”; upholding the agencies’ exemption claims based on the deliberative process, attorney-client, and attorney work-product privileges, as well as Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(E); yet also rejecting USCIS’s application of Exemption 7 to a “Memo for the Record” concerning the requester’s employment application because, as a “mixed-function agency,” the agency had failed to meet its burden to show how the record was “compiled for a law-enforcement purpose”; ordering USCIS to produce a supplemental affidavit addressing its law-enforcement functions vis-a-vis the contested memo or to proffer more detailed explanation for the applicability of Exemption 5.
Mar. 10, 2025
Brennan Ctr. for Justice v. U.S. Dep’t of State (S.D.N.Y.) -- deciding that: (1) department performed a reasonable search for certain documents referenced in President Trump’s 2017 travel ban; and (2) following in camera review of four documents, all but three pages of one document were fully protected by the presidential communications privilege and Exemption 1.
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. U.S. DOGE Serv. (D.D.C.) -- in most notable part, granting plaintiff’s request for expedited processing of various records from the U.S. DOGE Service (USDS) because the “preliminary record” indicated that USDS “likely” wields substantial independent authority from the White House and therefore is any agency subject to FOIA.
Kendrick v. DEA (D.D.C.) -- on renewed summary judgment, determining that DEA performed adequate supplemental searches for records concerning pro se plaintiff’s criminal case.
Mar. 6, 2025
Whitlock v. Dep’t of Def. (D.D.C.) — in case concerning federal corruption and bribery investigation involving the U.S. 7th Fleet, holding that: (1) government was entitled to summary judgment on issues uncontested by plaintiff, specifically that Navy conducted adequate searches and properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 5, 6, and 7(C); (2) government was required to release all records withheld pursuant to Exemption 7(A) because the criminal cases it identified as relevant were closed, and it failed to explain how disclosure of each category of withheld records would interfere with any Naval enforcement proceedings; and (3) government was required to release all records withheld pursuant to Exemption 7(B) because it failed to show that disclosure of each category of withheld records “would, more probably than not, seriously interfere with the fairness” of Naval enforcement proceedings.”
Gov’t Accountability Project v. Dep’t of the Treasury (D.D.C.) — finding that agency failed to show that Exemption 4 protected a company’s application and license to sell oil in Syria, because company’s unsworn statements made during the submitter notice process constituted inadmissible hearsay and, in any event, were too “vague and conclusory” to establish that the company customarily and actually treated the documents as private; further finding that some evidence supported Treasury’s position, including confidential markings on the disputed documents, and therefore denying both parties’ summary judgment motions.
Gatore v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D.D.C.) — in dispute concerning a request for attorney’s fees, ruling that: (1) only one of dozens of plaintiffs established an attorney-client relationship with moving counsel; (2) plaintiff was eligible for attorney’s fees as a prevailing party because agency had been ordered to release certain documents, rejecting agency’s argument that plaintiff needed to prove she received documents from her counsel; and (3) whether plaintiff was entitled to fees under four-factor test was unnecessary to decide owing to her counsel’s “total lack of billing judgment in this case . . . despite repeated warnings from this Court and other members in this District regarding the serious deficiencies of his billing practices.”
Mar. 3, 2025
Jensen v. SEC (D.D.C.) -- finding that SEC performed reasonable search for contract agreements and agency forms filed for two CUSIP numbers, which pro se plaintiff apparently hoped would “expose an alleged conspiracy, orchestrated by his sentencing court, to generate profit from the bonds associated with his criminal proceedings.”
Feb. 28, 2025
United States v. Alexander (5th Cir.) (unpublished) -- vacating lower court’s decision denying plaintiff-appellee’s request for grand jury records pertaining to his criminal case, because FOIA does not apply to federal courts and therefore the district court lacked jurisdiction to entertain plaintiff’s FOIA claim.
Puzey v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- in case concerning pro se inmate’s criminal case records, determining that: (1) DEA, FBI, EOUSA, and ATF performed adequate searches, an issue plaintiff did not dispute; (2) plaintiff did not meaningfully dispute EOUSA’s withholdings under Exemptions 3 and 5; (3) FBI and EOUSA properly withheld the names of agency employees, third parties, and state and law enforcement pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C); (4) government properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 7(D), 7(E), and 7(F), rejecting plaintiff’s public interest arguments as irrelevant; and (5) plaintiff conceded government’s foreseeable harm and segregability requirements.
Biggins v. USPS (D.N.J.) (unpublished) -- dismissing claim because plaintiff failed to send his request to a designated request center, he failed to label his request per agency regulations, and he improperly asked for information instead of records.
Feb. 27, 2025
Louise Trauma Ctr. v. ICE (D.D.C.) -- concluding that ICE did not sufficiently explain its search methodology for requested training material; that in camera review of agency’s Exemption 5 redactions was warranted; and that plaintiff’s request concerning agency’s information processing system was not reasonably described.
Feb. 26, 2025
Leopold v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — deciding that: (1) agency improperly relied on the deliberative process privilege’s consultant corollary doctrine to withhold its communications with pending nominees to Senate-confirmed positions, because a nominee has a self-interested, independent stake in the confirmation process; (2) agency properly withheld talking points and many other—but not all— records under the deliberative process privilege; and (3) agency met the foreseeable harm and segregability requirements.
Feb. 25, 2025
Transgender Law Ctr. v. ICE (D.D.C.) — in case concerning agency’s treatment of transgender detainees, concluding that: (1) ICE’s search was deficient because the agency neglected to clearly show that it searched the email accounts of two relevant employees, it unreasonably omitted one search term, and it unreasonably used another search term only in combination with other words; and (2) ICE failed to properly support its withholdings under Exemption 5’s attorney-client and deliberative process privileges, including whether foreseeable harm would result from disclosure; (3) ICE did not show how the records withheld under Exemptions 7(C) and 7(E) met the law enforcement threshold; (4) ICE improperly relied on Exemption 6 to withhold agency email domain addresses, to categorically withhold the names of “lower-level” agency employees and third parties, and to withhold name of a training video narrator.
Feb. 24, 2025
Turse v. DOD (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning records about a US drone strike in Somalia, granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment and concluding that its withholding of a PowerPoint slide and Army Regulation 15-6 Report of Investigation under Exemption 1 was appropriate; noting the agency’s declaration adequately described why the records at issue were classified and how disclosure would harm national security; rejecting the requester’s contention that the records were classified “for a prohibited purpose” for lack of evidence; similarly rejecting the requester’s arguments that the agency failed to satisfy the FOIA’s foreseeable-harm standard.
Dawkins v. FBI (E.D.N.Y.) — deciding that FBI performed an adequate search for any surveillance records about pro se plaintiff and his residence; plaintiff was not entitled to in camera review of documents because FBI’s declaration sufficiently detailed its search methodology and explained why it withheld certain records; plaintiff’s request for a court order ending FBI’s alleged surveillance could not be considered because plaintiff failed to raise those allegations in his complaint.
Feb. 21, 2025
Hvistendahi v. DOJ (S.D.N.Y.) -- in case concerning an Office of Inspector General’s report about personal misconduct of FBI employees overseas, concluding that: (1) FBI established that dates and locations of the misconduct, as well as the direct quotations from OIG interviews, implicated personal privacy interests under Exemption 7(C), but those interests were outweighed by a “significant public interest” in disclosure; and (2) FBI properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to withhold the “unsubstantiated allegations against FBI officials and the reasons why OIG found them unsubstantiated.”
Feb. 20, 2025
Am. Oversight v. DOJ (D.D.C.) — denying plaintiff’s request for expedited processing in a case concerning access to volume two of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago; holding that the motion for preliminary injunctive relief did not establish how the relief sought (specifically, disclosure of the report before any Senate confirmation vote on Kash Patel) would alleviate any ostensibly irreparable harm, in large part because another court has already enjoined DOJ from releasing the report “no matter what exemption decisions it makes”; questioning also whether the requester’s motion even seeks the type of injunctive relief permitted in the FOIA context.
The Brady Ctr. to Prevent Gun Violence v. FBI (D.D.C.) — determining that the FBI failed to show that disclosure of an agency’s standard operating procedures for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System would enable individuals to circumvent the law for purposes of Exemption 7(E); reserving judgment on the FBI’s segregability analysis until after the agency renewed its summary judgment motion or altered its withholdings; granting summary judgment to the FBI on non-contested information withheld under Exemption 5 and Exemption 7(E).
Magassa v. TSA (D.D.C.) — ruling that: (1) TSA properly relied on Exemption 3 in conjunction with 49 U.S.C. § 114(r) to withhold records concerning the plaintiff, a former employee of Delta Airlines whose security credentials were revoked; (2) TSA properly invoked Exemption 3 in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records indicating whether plaintiff is on a federal watch list; and (3) TSA substantiated its Exemption 5’s attorney-client and attorney work-product privilege redactions for records generated during the course of administrative proceedings concerning the plaintiff’s revoked security credentials.
Feb. 14, 2025
Am. Immigration Council v. EOIR (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment, and ordering the agency to undertake a supplemental search; concluding that EOIR “properly understood the scope of Plaintiffs’ FOIA request” to seek “official” documents about immigration court practices, but the agency nevertheless inappropriately limited its search to “solely centrally disseminated records” and improperly excluded records created locally by individual immigration courts and judges; concluding further that certain aspects of EOIR’s search were inadequate.
Feb. 13, 2025
Heritage Found. v. CIA (D.D.C.) — granting the CIA’s motion for judgment on the pleadings with respect to the plaintiff’s expedition request because that request lacked the required certification that the grounds for seeking expedition were “true and correct,” which thus rendered it deficient; rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments that its non-compliance should be excused because “this is not a case where . . . [it] ‘matters’” and it subsequently added the necessary “magic words” in a second request for expedition; noting that the ruling does not impact the requester’s remaining claims and does not foreclose a motion for leave to amend or supplement the Complaint.
S. Envtl. Law Ctr. v. Tenn. Valley Auth. (E.D. Tenn.) — denying the government’s partial motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, where the requester attempted to challenge the agency’s search adequacy after filing suit for lack of a timely response; holding that the FOIA’s right to judicial review does not distinguish between “an agency’s compliance with the timeframe clause . . . [and] the disclosure, reasonable search, and/or exemption subparagraph(s)”; noting that “Defendant’s labyrinthine conception of the FOIA seems contradictory to the very purposes for which Congress enacted” the law, and if “the Court [were] to take this argument to its logical conclusion, agencies could short-circuit judicial review through precisely the procedural dynamics of this case: force a requester to seek judicial review by failing to timely respond, disclose some requested material only after a suit is filed, and immediately move to dismiss any potential challenge to the adequacy of the disclosure, itself, on grounds of subject matter jurisdiction.”
Feb. 11, 2025
McWatters v. ATF (D.C. Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that ATF properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to withhold disputed portions of an audiotape of a deadly 2003 nightclub fire, because “disclosure . . . would invade the privacy interests of family members of those who perished” and plaintiff failed to identify a countervailing public interest.
Feb. 10, 2025
Leopold v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- in a case concerning access to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago investigative file, rejecting the agency’s reliance on Exemption 7(A) and its Glomar response, in large part because there is no longer any pending law enforcement proceeding (i.e., charges against President Trump have been dismissed), and future proceedings are not reasonably anticipated as President Trump is likely immune from prosecution; noting further that the agency failed to support its position with any suggestion of alleged criminal conduct by President Trump after the 2020 presidential election.
Feb. 6, 2025
Gannett Satellite Info. Network, LLC v. DOJ (D.D.C.) — on renewed motion for summary judgment in a case concerning access to “individual-level data about people who died while in custody of local jails and state and federal prisons between 2010 and 2019,” ruling in favor of the plaintiff on the issues of search adequacy and the application of exemptions; but granting in part the agency’s motion for partial reconsideration, thus excusing disclosure of certain records whose production was previously stayed and which would be covered by Exemption 3 and the “express confidentiality provision” of the Crime Control Act; notably, explaining the agency improperly limited its search by relying on a technical understanding of whether certain BOP data were “relevant” to the request, despite “being on notice about” what the plaintiff actually wanted and having failed to correct information online (and in the case record) that helped perpetuate plaintiff’s (and the court’s) misunderstanding; emphasizing “[t]he circumstances here”—either “sloppiness and inaccuracy” or, “at worst, intentional obfuscation”—“certainly do not flatter defendant”; further holding that Exemption 7(C) did not apply because the Bureau of Justice Statistics “does not specialize in law enforcement” and the agency otherwise failed to offer any evidence linking the requested data to a law-enforcement investigation; rejecting also the use of Exemption 6 because either there is no substantial privacy interest implicated or the public interest in disclosure is overriding.
Tran v. DOJ (D.D.C.) — in a case brought by a former FBI agent seeking records about his own “criminal investigation and prosecution,” granting in part and denying in part the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that, while the FBI’s Glomar response was justified for certain records, the agency failed to meet its burden with respect to others about an “undercover informant” who had revealed himself to the public and whom the FBI had “officially acknowledged" as serving in such capacity in another lawsuit; directing the government to provide further explanation for an apparent discrepancy between its initial estimate of responsive pages and the number of pages actually produced; finally, rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments about agency “bad faith” as “baseless and without merit.”
Stevens v. DHS (N.D. Ill.) — rejecting, in large part, a requester’s search-adequacy challenge because she “failed to rebut the presumption of good faith” afforded to agency declarations and because the agency’s search methodology (such as limiting efforts to certain offices or databases) was otherwise reasonable; nevertheless concluding that one no-responsive-records search conducted by an ICE field office involved unreasonably limited keywords because two other field offices were able to locate records with “more expansive search terms”; requiring limited supplemental searches for one request where ICE failed to explain its search terms and omitted search terms for subparts of the request; holding the government properly withheld records under Exemption 4 because “private contractors submitted the commercial information . . . with an assurance of privacy,” and Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege; ordering ICE to “re-process and re-evaluation its withholdings” of records not included in the parties’ agreed-upon initial “representative sampling”; finally, ordering ICE to reproduce an “unreadable . . . PDF of a spreadsheet” in native Excel format.
Burrus v. USDA (9th Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision dismissing pro se plaintiff’s FOIA claim, because plaintiff’s “general request for documentation supporting the agency's employment actions included in a letter that described its purpose as protesting those actions did not constitute a FOIA request”; noting that plaintiff’s letter was not addressed to a FOIA office and failed to include the phrase ‘FOIA request” as required by agency regulations.
Feb. 5, 2025
Ctr. for Immigration Studies v. USCIS (D.D.C.) — after in camera review, holding that USCIS properly withheld an internal policy memo concerning a “temporal tweak” to the Temporary Protected Status designation of Haiti under Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege; describing the memo as a “recommendary proposal”; rejecting the requester’s “adoption” argument because the factual record did not suggest “an express choice to use a deliberative document as a source of agency guidance”; similarly rejecting the requester’s “working law” argument given the nature of the advisory memorandum at issue; concluding the agency satisfied the foreseeable-harm standard because “release would chill candid speech about sensitive issues of foreign policy.”
Energy & Policy Inst. v. Tenn. Valley Auth. (E.D. Tenn.) — ruling that plaintiff was ineligible for attorney’s fees and litigation costs totaling $150k, notwithstanding the agency’s release of previously withheld records after the litigation started; accepting TVA’s argument that a business submitter, not the agency, changed its position on the confidential nature of certain records that had been withheld under Exemption 4; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that the “buck stops with TVA” with respect to withholdings, noting that the “statute expressly envisions cooperation of non-agency parties.”
Jan. 31, 2025
Day v. DOD (D.D.C.) -- concluding that EOUSA, USMS and INTERPOL Washington properly relied on Exemptions 6, 7(C) and 7(E) to withhold records concerning plaintiff that were referred by DOD’s Office of Inspector General; further finding that all agencies released reasonably segregable information to plaintiff.
Jan. 30, 2025
Power the Future v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s combined summary judgment motion and motion to dismiss; holding that (1) the plaintiff’s expedited processing claim was moot and the court lacked jurisdiction because all requested records had been released, (2) the plaintiff’s claim for costs and fees was premature and needed to be resolved though a post-judgment motion, and (3) the agency properly applied Exemption 6 and the FOIA’s foreseeable-harm requirement to withhold the names of two low-level employees; deciding not to decide the parties’ dispute over whether the requester exhausted all administrative remedies before filing suit.
Jan. 24, 2025
Am. First Legal Found. v. USDA (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that Exemption 5’s presidential communications privilege protected agency strategic plans to promote voter registration and voter participation that were submitted to the White House pursuant to an Executive Order; rejecting appellant’s argument that several agency declarations, the Executive Order, and a White House fact sheet undermined the White House’s sworn statements about the nature and use of the strategic plans.
Human Rights Def. Ctr v. U.S. Park Police (D.C. Cir.) -- (1) reversing district court’s decision that the names of police officers involved in three tort settlements were protected by Exemption 6 (and ordering their disclosure), because the agency’s showing was “wholly conclusory, lacking even minimal substantiation of the officers’ privacy interest or the potential harm from disclosing their names”; moreover, finding that the Park Police failed to meet the foreseeable harm test; and (2) vacating the district court’s order preventing plaintiff-appellant from disclosing, disseminating, or making use of the names of two settlement claimants inadvertently released; concluding that “neither FOIA nor any inherent judicial authority” enabled an agency to seek a court order to limit the effects of its error, and opining that a contrary Tenth Circuit decision neglected to properly consider “important limitations on courts’ inherent authority”; expressing no opinion as to whether a court may claw back inadvertently released documents that are “subject to any independent legal prohibition on disclosure such as applies to classified documents”, also declining to consider whether the First Amendment prevented the district court from issuing its clawback order.
Jan. 22, 2025
Sejas v. U.S. Attorney’s Office (S.D.N.Y.) -- granting government’s motion for summary judgment because pro se plaintiff, who sought records pertaining to three Bolivian individuals, neglected to administratively appeal agency’s denial pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C).
Jan. 17, 2025
Helmer v. U.S. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) -- determining that: (1) State Department performed adequate searches for various records concerning Sir Zelman Cowen, the nineteenth Governor-General of Australia; (2) plaintiff’s claim that State failed to timely respond to his request was moot; and (3) plaintiff lacked standing to bring a policy-or-practice claim because he never showed that he was realistically threatened by a repetition of State’s alleged policy of practice of unjustified delay.
Jan. 16, 2025
Stevens v. HHS (N.D. Ill.) -- ruling that:(1) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to show that it performed adequate search for various records concerning three individuals, reasoning that: (a) ICE neglected to explain the full scope of ICE program offices and why it limited its search to certain offices, (b) ICE did not sufficiently explain which of the potentially responsive records it found in each of the program offices for each of the individual requests were ultimately produced to plaintiff, and (c) ICE’s search terms were underinclusive for two of the requested individuals; and (2) agency failed to justify its withholdings, noting that its Vaughn Index was “at the very least incomplete” and its declaration contained “clearly erroneous statements showing a lack of attention to detail and accuracy”; further, remarking that ICE’s privacy-related redactions on a “publicly filed document readily available on a public docket” were “egregious,” “ludicrous” “preposterous,” and a “blatant misuse of exemptions” that “defies comprehension” and “screams of bad faith”; and (3) ICE must release all records to plaintiff in full, because: (a) in camera review would be too burdensome, (b) ICE already was already afforded an opportunity to file a supplemental Vaughn Index and “enough was enough” after years of delay.
Jan. 10, 2025
Cincinnati Enquirer v. DOJ (S.D. Ohio) -- ruling that FBI properly relied on Exemption 7(C) in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of text messages between seven private individuals and a former Cincinnati councilwoman who pled guilty to honest services wire fraud; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that Ohio’s state privacy law limited privacy interests recognized under FOIA; also rejecting plaintiff’s public interest arguments because, among other things, they wrongfully presupposed the existence of records.
Pub. Health & Med. Professionals for Transparency v. FDA (N.D. Tex.) -- denying government’s motion to indefinitely suspend court’s order requiring production of certain COVID vaccine-related records (purportedly one-million pages) by June 30, 2025; rejecting FDA’s argument that the court committed “clear error” in setting schedule, because: (a) the original production schedule was entered three years ago, (b) FDA knew about the existence of the records at issue well before disclosing their existence to plaintiff or the court; and (c) the records were “undoubtedly responsive” to plaintiff’s 2021 request and should have been processed along with other records that were last produced in November 2023; further, rejecting FDA’s argument that a lower production rate—such as the 500-page monthly rate used in multiple cases in the DDC— was justified by “exceptional circumstances,” noting that FDA’s understaffing excuse was based on an astonishing claim that newly trained FOIA personnel needed two years to be fully trained; lastly, rejecting FDA’s assertion that the production schedule would be unduly burdensome, reasoning that plaintiff’s request is “arguably the most important FOIA request in American history” and that FDA has previously “risen to the challenge” to meet the court’s production orders.
Jan. 8, 2025
Wade v. Dep’t of Def. (D.D.C.) — dismissing pro se lawsuit, ostensibly brought under FOIA, for failing to “indicat[e] in the complaint or otherwise that [the plaintiff] had submitted FOIA requests to the relevant agency seeking the documents at issue.”
Gelb v. Dep’t of Def. (D.D.C.) — among other things, granting the government’s motion for summary judgment and ruling that (1) the requester could not bring FOIA claims against the Secretary of Defense and DOD’s Chief FOIA Officer in their individual capacities, and, more notably, (2) that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service was not obliged to “create a computer program that obtains and synthesizes information from multiple databases to create a record that does not otherwise exist,” namely, a “report of all stale-dated checks and EFT payments worth $100,000 or more, issued between 2017 and 2020, that remain uncashed,” as that would entail record creation, “which the FOIA does not require.”
Jan. 3, 2025
Graybill v. NSA (C.D. Cal.) -- dismissing pro se lawsuit after finding that the NSA and CIA properly invoked Exemptions 1 and 3 to support their refusals to confirm or deny the existence of records concerning plaintiff.