Court opinions issued Feb. 4, 2026

Novak v. Cent. Intelligence Agency (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning a requester’s access to records about her mother’s officially acknowledged service at the CIA, granting in part and denying in part the agency’s motion for summary judgment; concluding, with respect to Exemption 1, that records were properly exempt from automatic declassification, despite their age (which, in the case of two records, was “more than 50 years old”), because of ongoing sensitivity, as “plausibly” explained by the agency’s declarant in sufficient detail; accordingly rejecting the requester’s request for in camera review; opining also that an agency “is entitled to a presumption that it complied with the obligation to disclose reasonably segregable material”; holding further, with respect to Exemption 3, that the agency properly relied on the CIA Act of 1949 to withhold various categories of information; finally, concluding the agency failed to meet its burden to redact “personal information” about “third-party individuals, i.e., individuals not employed by the CIA”; noting, for example, how “the CIA has not made any real effort to determine whether the third parties involved are still alive,” or whether they have cognizable privacy interests “at stake”; granting the CIA another opportunity to reassess its Exemption 6 withholding and to submit additional affidavits with a renewed motion for summary judgment.

Judicial Watch v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C) — ruling that the FBI properly relied on Exemption 7(E) to redact the total amount it paid Twitter for legal-process requests in each calendar quarter from 2016 to 2023, reasoning that while the existence of the FBI’s requests is publicly known, the payment amounts would reveal how frequently the FBI employs this technique and which platforms it prioritizes. In reaching its conclusion, the court deferred to the FBI’s judgment about the risks of disclosure, and plaintiff conceded that releasing the information would cause foreseeable harm

Carzoglio v. Executive Office for U.S. Attys (D.D.C.) — holding that EOUSA properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to categorically withhold all records concerning the criminal prosecution of a former police chief whose department had investigated and arrested plaintiff in an earlier case; explaining that plaintiff’s interest in challenging his conviction was not a cognizable “public interest” under the statute, and that the prosecution of the police chief for tax evasion “had nothing to do with” plaintiff’s earlier investigation or conviction.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Feb. 3, 2026

Crisman v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding, in relevant part, that the agencies’ searches for responsive records were reasonable and adequately supported, and that the requester’s inapt reliance on Glomar responses for other records did not amount to a meaningful challenge; rejecting also the requester’s argument that DOJ’s “policy of allowing an FBI official to classify a record after receiving a FOIA requestion violates the terms of Executive Order 12958,” given controlling precedent on sub-delegation in Mobley v. CIA, 806 F.3d 568 (D.C. Cir. 2015).

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Jan. 30, 2026

Kalbers v. DOJ (9th Cir.) -- reversing district’s court’s decision and holding that Exemption 3, in conjunction with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), protected nearly all records provided by Volkswagen to DOJ pursuant to federal grand jury subpoena; rejecting the district court’s approach that focused on whether the documents themselves were inherently revealing and reasoning that disclosure would necessarily reveal matters occurring before the grand jury by exposing the scope and direction of its investigation into Volkswagen’s emissions fraud; remanding only for consideration of whether four unmarked documents must be disclosed.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Jan. 28 & 29, 2026

Jan. 29 2026

Advocates for Human Rights v. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Servs. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning access to “applications for T visas,” as well as “three categories of associated documents,” granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; holding, as an initial matter, that 8 U.S.C. § 1367(a)(2), which was enacted in 1997 and lacks any cross-reference to the FOIA, still qualifies as a withholding provision for purposes of Exemption 3, despite another subsection of Section 1367 having been amended in 2013 after the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009; holding further that the agency had “invoked Exemption 3 indiscriminately” by failing to recognize how Section “1367(a)(2)’s strict confidentiality does not extend to all T visa applications,” but instead specifically excludes from its scope “fully denied T visa applications”; remanding to the agency with instructions to conduct another search and identify “finally denied” visa applications and related records for possibly disclosure; concluding, at the same time, that the agency properly withheld certain “fully approved T visa applications and related records.”

Informed Consent Action Network v. Food & Drug Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for an Open America stay; rejecting the requester’s argument that the FOIA does not provide courts with the authority to stay proceedings; concluding the agency adequately demonstrated the existence of “exceptional circumstances,” as well as “due diligence” in its efforts to process the request at issue; noting, with respect to “exceptional circumstances,” that the FDA was currently subject to judicial orders in the Northern District of Texas that require the production of “over nine million pages of records by October 1, 2026.”

Jan. 28, 2026

Am. Wild Horse Campaign v. Bureau of Land Mgmt. (D.D.C.) — upon review of a magistrate’s Report and Recommendations on the requester’s motion for attorney’s fees and costs, granting in part and denying in part the motion; holding, firstly, that the requester was “eligible” for fees on a catalyst theory because the agency changed its legal position “in response to the Court’s orders and Plaintiff’s efforts,” and its efforts to negotiate with the requester in “good faith” did not seriously suggest it would have provided any supplemental productions beyond what it originally disclosed to the requester; holding, further, that all four “entitlement” factors weighed in favor of a fee award; of note, rejecting the agency’s argument that its basis for nondisclosure had been “colorable or reasonable,” when its sole position in litigation had been that the request at issue was “too ambiguous to merit processing”; with respect to the fee amount, concluding it would be reasonable to allow recovery on (1) time spent preparing an opposition to the agency’s motion to dismiss that was ultimate dismissed as moot, (2) time spent preparing for a motion hearing, (3) “time spent reviewing records . . . not merely to satisfy the curiosity that prompted [the requester] to file its FOIA request in the first place, but to ensure that nothing further remained to litigate,” and (4) “time devoted to the unsuccessful negotiation over attorney’s fees”; likewise holding that the magistrate’s “proposed award of fees on fees is reasonable”; finally, awarding the requester a total of $58,741.78 in fees and costs.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Jan. 27, 2026

Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability, Inc. v. Nat’l Sec. Agency (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion to reconsider a January 2024 summary judgment opinion based on a “purported intervening change in law,” namely, the D.C. Circuit’s July 2025 decision in Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability, Inc. v. Dep’t of Justice; holding, firstly, that the Circuit’s decision was not controlling due to important differences in the scope of the requests at issue, which had important implications for the government’s obligation to conduct a search; holding, moreover, that the Circuit’s decision did not constitute a significant change in the law because it construction of earlier precedent did not undermine the instant court’s legal conclusions about the availability of categorical Glomar responses.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Jan. 22, 2026

Checksfield v. IRS (2nd Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that the IRS properly relied on Exemption 3, in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103, to withhold in full third-party tax returns or return information; rejecting requester’s argument that any exceptions to non-disclosure applied.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Jan. 21, 2026

Am. Oversight v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s Rule 12(f) motion to strike twenty-two introductory paragraphs from the requester’s FOIA complaint, which the government argued comprised “entirely irrelevant alleged factual material and editorialized statements”; noting the government “concedes . . . such motions ‘are generally disfavored,’” and that the requester “contests” the supposed irrelevance of the content; concluding none of the paragraphs at issue are “scandalous or prejudicial” and “judicial efficiency is far better served by not required Plaintiff to amend.”

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Jan. 20, 2026

Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; agreeing with the Second Circuit’s decision in Everytown for Gun Safety v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, 984 F.3d 30 (2d Cir. 2020), that notwithstanding the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009’s requirement that any statute used with Exemption 3 expressly reference the FOIA, Congress’s 2012 version of the so-called “Tiahrt Rider” is a qualifying withholding statute, despite lacking any such “specific citation to section 552(b)(3)”; rejecting, as an aside, the requester’s suggestion that the Rider, while “preclud[ing] the use of appropriated funds for purposes of responding to a FOIA request for firearms trace data,” “does not bar . . . release . . . if someone else foots the bill”; agreeing with the agency’s interpretation of the breadth of the Rider, which “is best read to immunize . . . all firearms trade data, not only data disclosed to governmental entities for law enforcement, national security, or intelligence purposes”; holding further that the Rider leaves no discretion to the agency to disclose firearms trace data; explaining all records sought in Baltimore’s request fell within the Rider’s prohibition on disclosure; of note, failing to mention the relevance of the government’s disclosure of information protected by the Rider in the pending “clawback”-order appeal, Gun Owners of America, No. 25-5309 (D.C. Cir. filed Aug. 25, 2025), despite having ordered supplemental briefing from the government on that point.

Marker v. Dep’t of Educ. (N.D. Cal.) — ruling the department conducted an adequate search for records concerning plaintiff’s federal student loans; rejecting plaintiff’s challenges to the search methodology, concluding that alternative search terms and additional databases would not have produced unique borrower-specific records; further holding that the department was not required to produce records of payments allegedly made to prior commercial servicers because those records were no longer in the department’s possession or control.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Jan. 15, 2026

Leopold v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- on remand from the D.C. Circuit, holding that DOJ properly relied on Exemption 8 to withhold a Monitor Report assessing HSBC’s anti–money laundering and sanctions compliance and met the foreseeable harm requirement because disclosure of any portion of the report would threaten the effectiveness of bank supervision; reasoning that although redactions could mitigate harms such as criminal exploitation, competitive injury, and chilled employee candor, those risks alone did not justify withholding the entire document; further explaining that DOJ showed—through sworn declarations from foreign regulators—that release of even a redacted report would undermine settled expectations of confidentiality and foreseeably chill future cooperation with U.S. monitors and regulators.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Jan. 14, 2026

Levin v. IRS (N.D. Ala.) -- finding that the IRS properly relied on Exemption 7(A) and 7(E) to withhold guidance and templates used by IRS examiners in Employee Retention Credit (ERC) examinations, even though the materials were not tied to a specific taxpayer or investigation.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.