Court opinions issued 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.

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. 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.”

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. 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.”

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

ACLU v. ICE (C.D. Cal.) -- granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; finding that, despite the parties’ contentions, there were no genuine issues of material fact in dispute; concluding that, with respect to search adequacy vis-a-vis a portion of the request under litigation, ICE failed to provide an adequate justification for not following clear leads to further, “overlooked” responsive materials found in records produced to the plaintiff; concluding further that the agency improperly refused to conduct searches of other records locations and custodians which were reasonably held by plaintiff to contain responsive information; holding that the agency failed to properly follow-up with a component office that claimed it was unable to conduct a search in the first instance; noting, in that regard, that “as a policy matter, an agency cannot be said to have satisfied its burden under FOIA when a division within that agency, able to conduct a valid search, defers the search to another division, which is unable to conduct that search.”

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. 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.

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