Court opinion issued July 25, 2023

Down Law Grp. v. U.S. Coast Guard (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) Coast Guard did not conduct adequate search for certain records concerning the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill clean-up, because agency erroneously narrowed scope of plaintiff’s first request and failed to sufficiently explain its search methodology; and (2) agency failed to show how Exemption 6 protected the names of Coast Guard personnel who were given awards for their service in connection with the oil spill response, rejecting agency’s explanation that disclosure would subject personnel to harassment and violence.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued July 24, 2023

McCann v. USCIS (E.D. La.) -- deciding that: (1) agency failed to sufficiently explain how it searched for records pertaining to plaintiff; (2) agency conducted adequate segregability analysis, noting that agency’s Vaughn Index was “detailed and meticulous”; and (3) ICE properly processed 16 pages referred to it from USCIS, but ICE failed to account for a 17th page that USCIS reportedly referred to it.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued July 21, 2023

Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program v. DHS (D. Mass. 2023) -- determine that: (1) government neglected to adequately search for records concerning ICE's use of solitary confinement in immigration detention centers; (2) government failed to show that certain redacted emails and memoranda were pre-decisional under Exemption 5 or that factual materials in expert reports were Inextricably Intertwined with policy making recommendations; and (3) government properly relied on Exemption 7(E) to withhold four types of records concerning detainees.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued July 20, 2023

Rocky Mountain Wild v. BLM (D. Colo.) -- finding that: (1) Bureau of Land Management’s supplemental filings established that agency had properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege and met the foreseeable harm standard with respect to withheld records concerning a field office’s amendment of its “Resource Management Plan”; (2) BLM’s supplemental search, which yielded additional responsive records, was adequate; and (3) BLM properly relied on Exemption 6 to redact two newly discovered pages, but it failed to explain how Exemption 5 redactions on one page met the foreseeable harm standard.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued July 18, 2023

Am. First Legal Found. v. U.S. Dep't of Agric. (D.D.C.) -- holding that 14 agencies properly relied on Exemption 5’s presidential communications privliege to withhold in full strategic plans each agency had prepared “in response to an Executive Order regarding promoting access to voting Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and head of the Domestic Policy Council within the White House”; further holding that White House Special Counsel adequately showed foreseeable harm by identifying potential chilling effects on confidential and canid presidential decision-making, consistent with other rulings withun the Circuit.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued July 11, 2023

Nat’l Student Legal Def. Network v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ. (D.D.C.) -- following in camera review of emails between Social Security Administration and Department of Education lawyers regarding certain student loan program, determining that government’s Exemption 5 withholdings were properly made under the attorney work-product privilege; noting that privilege was justified by both pending and anticipated litigation, and that government’s shifting arguments did not defeat the exemption claim.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued July 10, 2023

Rutila v. DOT (5th Cir.) -- affirming district court decision that: (1) FAA’s fee assessment was timely because FAA had tolled response deadline once in order to clarify time scope of plaintiff’s request; (2) FAA was not required to take screenshots of certain requested information that was displayed to agency system users but could not be exported.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued July 7, 2023

Pfeiffer v. U.S. Dep’t of Energy (D.D.C.) -- denying government’s motion for reconsideration of court’s rulings that: (1) plaintiff qualified as an educational institution because he demonstrated that his requests were connected to his scholarly research ; and (2) plaintiff’s potential profit from publishing responsive records on his webpage did not trump plaintiff’s intentions to use records for scholarly purposes, and therefore government improperly denied plaintiff’s fee waiver request.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinions issued July 5, 2023

Ecological Rights Found. v. EPA (9th Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that: (1) EPA properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process and attorney-client privileges to withhold certain records concerning “supplemental environmental projects”; and (2) EPA did not have a pattern or practice of violating FOIA, and therefore plaintiff was not entitled to injunctive or declaratory relief.

Naumes v. Dep’t of the Army (D.D.C.) -- awarding plaintiff costs and $111,415 in attorney’s fees—after reducing plaintiff’s fee request for time spent on unsuccessful issues—in case concerning access to Army’s mental-fitness questionnaire and related records.

Zaid v. DOJ (D. Md.) -- in consolidated cases involving DOJ, IRS, and DHS records about plaintiff’s client, Zackary Sanders, who was convicted of producing child pornography, concluding that: (1) plaintiff was not required to administratively appeal from ICE’s determination that his request was “too broad,” because ICE failed to plaintiff of his appeal rights; (2) four of plaintiff’s requests to ICE were reasonably described, but a fifth request seeking “any records referencing specific term was “overly broad”; (3) U.S. Secret Service performed adequate search for records pertaining to plaintiff’s client; (4) FBI properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 5, 6, 7(A), 7(C), and 7(D); (5) IRS properly withheld records pursuant to Exemption 3 in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103(a); (6) EOUSA properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 5 and 7(E); and (7) ICE properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C).

Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research v. SEC (E.D. Va.) -- ruling that: (1) plaintiff’s Amended Complaint failed to challenge the SEC’s redactions and plaintiff could not add the claim via briefing; (2) plaintiff’s timeliness claim became moot as soon as the SEC issued a final determination, rejecting plaintiff’s argument that its timeliness claim was '“capable of repetition, yet evading review”; and (3) in response to requests for “all communications” of various SEC employees, the agency unreasonably limited its searches to the specific examples of communications that plaintiff identified.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued June 30, 2023

Flyers Rights Education Fund v. FAA (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that FAA properly relied on Exemption 4 to withhold certain records pertaining to agency’s recertification of Boeing 737; in reaching its decision, the Court rejected four arguments made by appellants and held that: (1) generic promises by FAA to be transparent about the recertification process fell “far short of an explicit representation that FAA would disclose the disputed documents, and Boeing’s similar statements about transparency “hardly amount to an ‘explicit’ commitment to release [its] proprietary documents, let alone an indication that the FAA would do so”; (2) FAA was not required to release certain agency-authored material because FAA demonstrated that disclosure would reveal confidential commercial information obtained from Boeing; and (3) questioning whether prohibition on secret agency law may limit the scope of Exemption 4, but in any event finding that records submitted by Boeing to show compliance with FAA regulations were proprietary to Boeing’s aircraft and did not become part of FAA’s body of law; and (4) FAA carried its burden on segregability with nonconclusory affidavits.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.