Court opinion issued Jan. 16, 2024

Bloomberg v. FTC (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) FTC properly withheld all but three portions of its preconsummation warning letters pursuant to Exemption 3, in conjunction with 15 U.S.C. § 18a(h), specifically the identities of business filers that were already in the public domain, the dates of the warning letter; and boilerplate language; and (2) agency failed to show that Exemption 7(A) protected any of the three portions of the disputed letters set forth above.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinion issued Jan. 12, 2024

Children’s Health Def. v. FDA (D.D.C.) -- granting six-month Open America stay (with possibility of extension) in case concerning records of safety monitoring of COVID-19 vaccines, because agency faced “exceptional circumstances” from an “extraordinary production obligation” imposed by a Texas federal court—specifically 75,000 pages per month in January 2024 and 180,000 pages per month thereafter in response to a FOIA request related to Moderna’s adult COVID-19 vaccine.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinion issued Jan. 9, 2023

Cato v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- concluding that plaintiff was entitiled to relief from court’s judgment because of “newly discovered evidence” concerning the adequacy of FBI’s search, namely an FBI declaration filed in a 2018 case that contradicted the FBI’s position in the instant case regarding the agency’s Central Records System; reasoning, in part, that the public availability of FBI’s 2018 declaration on PACER was not fatal to plaintiff’s motion, because the declaration was not discoverable by a reasonably diligent search.

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

Court opinions issued Jan. 5, 2023

Freedom Coal. of Doctors for Choice v. CDC (N.D. Tex.) -- determining that plaintiff’s request for 7.8 million free-text responses to agency’s COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring system would not be unreasonably burdensome for agency to process, because: (1) the volume of the responsive texts would yield between as little as 83 thousand pages and at most 650 thousand pages; (2) CDC conceded that 93 percent of the responses would require no redaction at all; and (3) any necessary redactions of personal identifying information pursuant to Exemption 6 would be “simple” and “capable of automated assistance.”

Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability. v. NSA (D.D.C.) -- deciding that: (1) agencies were permitted to issue Glomar responses before conducting searches for requested records of the intelligence community’s acquisition and use of commercially available information pertaining to named Congressmen and former Congressmen; (2) agencies properly relied on Exemptions 1 and 3 in refusing to confirm or deny existence of “operational documents,” but were required to conduct a search for “policy documents.”

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinions issued Jan. 2, 2024

Checksfield v. IRS (N.D.N.Y.) -- concluding that agency properly invoked Exemption 3, in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103, in response to plaintiff’s request for personal and business tax returns of third party.

Curry v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- ruling that FBI’s supplemental briefing adequately justified the agency’s withholdings pursuant to Exemptions 3 (Bank Secrecy Act), 7(A), and 7(E), which pro se plaintiff did not oppose.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 28, 2023

Nat'l Press Club Journalism Inst. v. USCIS (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) both USCIS and ICE conducted adequate searches for records concerning a Mexican journalist and his son, but not with respect to records of “mechanisms used to limit or block phone calls” at ICE’s El Paso facilities”; (2) ICE’s Vaughn Index and declarations were inadequate to justify its withholdings pursuant to Exemption 5 (deliberative process and attorney-client privileges) and Exemptions 6 and 7(C); and (3) ICE was entitled to reprocess documents that it inadvertently disclosed to plaintiff, but declining to limit plaintiff’s use of inadvertently disclosed documents because ICE had “not moved for any relief whatsoever on this front.”

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

Court opinion issued Dec. 22, 2023

Ctr. For Investigative Reporting v. DOL (N.D. Cal.) -- concluding that DOL improperly withheld EEO-1 reports pursuant to Exemption 4 after deciding—over the objections of six representative federal contractors—that: (1) the workforce demographic data contained within those reports did not qualify as “commercial”; (2) such data was not independently protected by the Trade Secrets Act; and (3) whether the data was “confidential” was a moot issue, as was the foreseeable harm test.

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

Court opinion issued Dec. 21, 2023

Magassa v. TSA (D.C. Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that: (1) TSA properly withheld security screening records concerning plaintiff pursuant to Exemption 3 in conjunction with 49 U.S.C. § 114(r); (2) TSA properly relied on Exemption 6 to withhold names of certain TSA agents associated with screening plaintiff; (3) agency performed adequate search in response to plaintiff’s request; and (4) plaintiff could not challenge agency’s Glomar response as to whether plaintiff appeared on terrorist watch lists, because he failed to raise the issue in his administrative appeal.

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

Court opinion issued Dec. 20, 2023

Muzumala v. FBI (S.D.N.Y.) -- finding that: (1) FBI timely responded to plaintiff’s request by regular mail to plaintiff’s last known address, rejecting plaintiff’s argument that he was entitled to a response via email; (2) FBI performed a reasonable search for records concerning plaintiff, who provided no evidence that agency had responsive records; and (3) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement performed adequate search for records concerning plaintiff and properly withheld certain records pursuant to Exemption 3 in conjunction with 49 U.S.C. § 114(r), as well as Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(E).

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

Court opinions issued Dec. 19, 2023

Am. Civil. Liberties Union of Mass. v. DHS (D. Mass.) -- following in camera review of disputed records, concluding that DHS properly relied on Exemption 7(E) to withhold portion of its “Criminal Gangs Investigations Handbook” that contained “detailed definitions and the specific criteria that [the agency] considers when identifying gangs, criminal activity, and gang members.”

Lindsay-Poland v. DOJ (N.D. Cal.) -- ruling that: (1) even if an appropriations rider protected certain firearms information pursuant to Exemption 3, an exception to that rider permitted disclosure of certain “statistical aggregate data” to plaintiff because he was a news media representative or the functional equivalent; and (2) agency failed to adequately show that release of zip code data would violate the privacy of certain licensees and fall outside the bounds of “statistical aggregate data.”

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