Court opinions issued 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.

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

Court opinion issued 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.

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

Court opinion issued 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.

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

Court opinions issued 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.

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

Court opinion issued 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.

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

Court opinions issued 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.

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

Court opinion issued August 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%.

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

Court opinions issued 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.

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

Court opinion issued 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.

N.B. As the Circuit’s opinion noted, the federal government will no longer collect these “diversity” reports—at least not for the duration of the Trump Administration. See E.O. 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” 90 Fed. Reg. 8633 (Jan. 31, 2025); see also 41 C.F.R. § 60–1.7(c), revocation proposed by Rescission of Executive Order 11246 Implementing Regulations, 90 Fed. Reg. 28472-01 (proposed July 1, 2025).

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

Court opinions issued July 28-29, 2025

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 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).

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