Jackson v. HHS (D. Nev.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s FOIA claim because plaintiff failed to respond to agency’s motion to dismiss, which argued plaintiff lacked standing to bring suit because he was not the original requester.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.”
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.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.”
[RPM: For those you might be interested, FOIA Advisor’s own Ryan Mulvey filed an amicus brief on behalf of Americans for Prosperity Foundation in the Sixth Circuit last month, which addresses, in relevant part, the interaction of the FOIA and the Copyright Act, and concludes that copyright claims can’t be used as grounds for withholding.]
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.”
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.”
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
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.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.