Court opinions issued Mar. 2 & 3, 2026

March 2, 2026

Slaughter v. Dep’t of the Air Force (D.D.C.) — ordering the agency to file supplemental declarations concerning the adequacy of its search for records, but granting the its motion for summary judgment as to the withholding of a video under Exemption 1; noting how “[t]he government has not provided details regarding the scope or methods of the initial search that was conducted before [the requester] filed suit, nor has it attempted to defend the adequacy of that search”; rejecting the agency’s argument that “supplemental searches conducting after this litigation began fulfilled its FOIA obligations”; with respect to Exemption 1, agreeing with the requester that the agency’s declaration is lacking in its description of “what portion of the information . . . is non-exempt and how that material is dispersed throughout” the video, but “binding D.C. Circuit precedent hold that the Court is to presume . . . no intelligible segments of non-exempt information can be reasonably segregated.’”

Pub. Emps. for Envtl. Resp. v. Envtl. Prot. Agency (D.D.C.) — in a pair of consolidated cases regarding records about suspected chemical contamination, and a reverse-FOIA claim to block their disclosure, granting the plaintiff’s motion to complete the administrative record; concluding the agency must include “initial Confidential Business Information (CBI) Substantiation Forms” provided by a submitter-company, as they reflect the submitter’s efforts to “substantiate its confidentiality claims,” as required by relevant statutes and agency regulations, and because the forms were used by the agency “to identify records to withhold in response to” the FOIA requests at issue; explaining that “[w]hether [the submitter’s] claims [against disclosure] are of any merit is a question left to be decided at summary judgment, but adequate review calls for evaluation of EPA’s treatment of the initial CBI substantiations.”

Haleem v. Dep’t of Def. (D.D.C) — denying a requester’s motion for fees; holding, firstly, that the requester was “eligible for fees” on a catalyst theory; noting the evidentiary record “shows an imperfect process replete with ‘administrative errors,’” “mismarked FOIA referrals,” and a “ten-month” gap where the agency “provides no explanation of its activities”; concluding, however, that the requester was not “entitled” to an award because there was no public benefit in disclosure, and the requester was motivated by a “substantial private interest in bringing . . . suit.”

March 3, 2026

Informed Consent Action Network v. Nat’l Insts. of Health (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning access to records about the “removal of early COVID-19 genetic sequencing data from an NIH-administered database,” granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; concluding that NIH properly invoked Exemption 6 to withhold two categories of records: (1) identifying information for “Chinese researchers” who “submitted data to the BioSample and SRA databases and later requested withdrawal of that data,” and (2) “identifying information for NIH employees who work on the SRA database”; noting substantial privacy interests were implicated, in part, due to the agency declarant’s citation to stories of “threats of violence” and “harassment” against individuals working on “controversial research”; rejecting the requester’s argument that the identifying information at issue was “‘key’ to understanding ‘the origins’ of the COVID pandemic and ‘how to prevent a public health crisis in the future’”; finally, concluding the agency satisfied the foreseeable-harm standard and its obligation to reasonably segregate non-exempt portions of records.

Barth v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment against a pro se requester seeking records about himself, while also denying the requester’s motions for recusal and reconsideration; holding, in relevant part, that DOJ’s Office of Information Policy conducted an adequate search for records.

Am. Oversight v. U.S. Agency for Int’l Dev. (D.D.C.) — dismissing claims brought under the Federal Records Act and the Administrative Procedure Act concerning USAID’s alleged failure to preserve, or seek to recover, federal records, namely, “employee and contractor records” on government-issued electronic devises, certain other “physical records,” and “records stored on USAID’s website,” as nonjusticiable; rejecting the plaintiff’s theory of standing, which was predicated on “imminent threat of future injury from improper destruction or removal of relevant records” that would be responsive to its pending FOIA requests, which were also the subject of the instant litigation and have not been dismissed; describing portions of the plaintiff’s case as “speculative at best” vis-a-vis redressability.

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 Feb. 25, 2026

D.V.D. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D. Mass.) — in a class-action lawsuit concerning the removal of non-citizens to “so-called ‘third countries,’” granting the government’s motion to dismiss a FOIA claim concerning the affirmative disclosure of certain relevant agency guidance both for lack of standing and failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted; concluding, with respect to a dated guidance document, that plaintiffs failed to show “‘they sought and were denied specific agency records,’” and therefore lacked any “sign of a ‘concrete and particularized informational injury’”; yet noting the Court was assuming “a formal request [was] not absolutely necessary”; concluding also, regardless of whether the agency had failed to post the guidance document in its reading room, the plaintiffs already had a copy, which was attached to their complaint, and this “belie[d] any allegation that DHS’s reliance [on the guidance] constitute[d] harmful use of a ‘secret’ law against them”; further rejecting the “reading room” claim as it applied to unspecified “other statements of policy or instructions or guidance,” because it failed to “reasonably describe” the records at issue and, thus, could not provide the government with “fair notice” of what records should even have been proactively disclosed.

Levin v. Nat’l Highway Traffic Safety Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment in a case involving Exemption 5 and records about NHTSA’s proposed guidelines on “distracted driving”; largely rejecting the agency’s use of the deliberative-process privilege given its failure to “articulate any specific foreseeable harm from release,” as well as its decision instead to apply “boilerplate and generic assertions” to “six broad categories” of records; directing the agency to release these records, as “afford[ing] [the agency] a ‘second chance’ to explain [its] withholding” is unlikely to “aid NHTSA’s case,” especially since it has “already had two bites at the apple” in its opening brief and opposition to the requester’s cross-motion; rejecting certain assertions of the attorney-client privilege due to the agency’s failure to “articulate the connection between the documents withheld and the provision of legal advice,” and where it seems communications are just “strategic or policy discussions in which lawyers are simply included or copied,” or where they “describe logistical information about an attorney’s role in review processes or coordination”; otherwise accepting the agency’s attorney-client privilege arguments, as well as its satisfaction of the foreseeable-harm standard and its efforts to release all segregable factual information; finally, rejecting the agency’s invocation of the attorney work-product doctrine because it failed to “articulate[] any reason why litigation was foreseeable at the time of the creation of these documents.”

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. 24, 2026

Jensen v. Dep’t of the Navy (D.D.C.) — in a case involving a former Naval Academy midshipman seeking records about his expulsion, granting the government’s motion to dismiss all non-FOIA claims raised in the requester’s complaint; rejecting the Navy’s claim that the Privacy Act’s exhaustion requirement is jurisdictional, but otherwise agreeing that the requester’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies, which would be a “prudential precondition for a record-access claim,” “dooms” his Privacy Act claims here; explaining further, that with respect to the remaining non-FOIA claims that concern the requester’s access to records, the FOIA “provides an adequate remedy” and therefore forecloses relief under the Administrative Procedure Act, the All Writs Act, and the Declaratory Judgment Act.

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 Feb. 20, 2026

Aaronson v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case involving an investigative journalist’s inquiry into the FBI’s “alleged impersonation of the media,” granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; concluding the FBI properly denied one of the reporter’s requests as “unduly burdensome” because it would have required searching for email records covering “a four-and-a-half-year period” across “more than 70,000 email accounts”; rejecting, in this regard, the requester’s argument that the FBI could “perform bulk, backend searches of its classified and unclassified email systems through its existing IT and e-discovery capabilities”; ruling against the government vis-a-vis its failure to perform an adequate search “in one respect,” namely, looking for potentially responsive records maintained by the Undercover Review Committee; holding moreover that the FBI did not justify its categorical Glomar response based on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) as any records that mention “Brent Tyler”—a pseudonym for an FBI employee—would not implicate those exemptions’ underlying privacy concerns because no “person’s privacy is at stake”; finally, explaining that, after reviewing an in camera declaration from the FBI, if the agency had, in fact, invoked a statutory exclusion, that invocation “was and remains amply justified.”

Khan v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding, firstly, that plaintiffs did not exhaust administrative remedies for two of the requests at issue because they failed to file appeals, and rejecting the requesters’ argument that untimely determinations “alleviated the appeal requirement”; also holding that the government met its burden to show it performed adequate searches for potentially responsive records and noting, contrary to the requesters’ insistence, that there was no evidence of “bad faith”; finally, concluding the agencies properly invoked Exemptions 3, 5, 6, 7(C), and 7(F).

Bradley v. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs (N.D. Fla.) — adopting in full a magistrate judge’s Report and Recommendation and dismissing a pro se, in forma pauperis requester’s FOIA case for “failure to comply with court orders,” namely, directions to file an amended complaint that addressed several pleading deficiencies.

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 Feb. 19, 2026

Powell v. Dep’t of the Treasury (D.D.C.) — granting the IRS’s dispositive motions; noting, at the outset, that it is unclear whether the IRS or the Treasury is the proper named defendant, but “reserv[ing] that question for another day,” since it would make “no practical difference” here; concluding, firstly, that the requester’s non-FOIA claims under the APA, Section 6103, and the Mandamus Act should be dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6); concluding further that the requester’s FOIA claims were not properly exhausted because he “did not perfect his FOIA requests” prior to filing suit by providing the IRS with the necessary proof of the “right to access the requested records,” which included “various tax documents associated with his family’s business entities”; rejecting the agency’s suggestion that an administrative appeal was required, given its regulations which suggest the closure of the requests was not, in fact, an adverse determination triggering the right to appeal.

Citizens For Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction, concluding that plaintiff was likely to succeed on the merits of its claims for expedited processing of records about DOJ’s voter data requests; finding that CREW qualified as “primarily engaged in disseminating information” and that its requests involved matters of exceptional public and media interest affecting confidence in government integrity; declining, however, to order CREW’s requested production rate, reasoning that doing so could disrupt DOJ’s handling of other requests and risk mishandling sensitive material.

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. 18, 2026

Rhodes v. IRS (N.D. Ala.) -- dismissing the lawyer’s lawsuit against the IRS for lack of Article III standing, finding that he lacked a concrete personal injury because the FOIA request was submitted on behalf of his client, not in his own name.

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 Feb. 17, 2026

Lenz v. IRS (D.C. Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that plaintiff failed to demonstrate that IRS attorneys knowingly misrepresented the status of two boxes of responsive documents sought in a 2008 FOIA lawsuit involving the same parties; finding that plaintiff’s motion for relief under Rule 60(b)(3) was untimely filed and that the district court properly declined to set aside the judgment under its inherent authority due to lack of clear and convincing evidence of fraud.

Biggins v. USPS (D.N.J.) -- granting agency’s motion to dismiss pro se plaintiff’s amended Complain, which sought change-of-address information of a third party upon whom plaintiff wanted to serve legal process; finding that plaintiff failed to submit proper FOIA requests and had not exhausted administrative remedies.

Ezeah v. EOUSA (D.D.C.) -- denying plaintiff's motion for reconsideration and granting summary judgment to the government after the agency clarified that the only records requested by plaintiff—communications related to his prosecution between the federal prosecutor and his defense attorney, and between the prosecutor and an FBI agent—had been permanently deleted under the agency’s retention policy.

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. 12, 2026

Informed Consent Action Network v. Food & Drug Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the agency’s motion for an Open America stay of proceedings; concluding that the agency adequately demonstrated “exceptional circumstances,” in large part due to “aggressive production rates” imposed by a “Texas court” that require the agency to disclose “up to 180,000 pages each month”; rejecting various arguments raised by the requester, which were unsuccessfully raised before other judges in the DDC in the recent past, including last week; noting, moreover, that the agency has “acted diligently” in processing the requests at issue, despite its limited resources and staffing.

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 Feb. 9 & 10, 2026

Feb. 10, 2026

Foster v. Drug Enf’t Admin. (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion for summary judgment, rejecting its use of Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(E), and, after conducting in camera review, ordering disclosure of “security-camera footage from over fifteen years ago that depicts the parking lot of a pain clinic”; concluding, as an initial matter, that the video footage met the Exemption 7 threshold as it was “obtained and used by the FBI in connection with its criminal investigation into the illegal distribution of prescription drugs”; yet also concluding there was no privacy interest at stake because the footage was “of low resolution”—“[n]o faces are discernible . . . no license plates are visible, and no individual can reasonably be identified”; with regard to Exemption 7(E), concluding the “video was [not] captured by [the agency’s] surveillance devices,” and therefore could shed no light on how the FBI “conducts surveillance, selects targets, or allocates investigative resources,” and the government otherwise had failed to persuasively describe how disclosure would risk circumvention of the law.

Feb. 9, 2026

Zavala v. Immigration & Customs Enf’t (W.D. Pa.) — denying a requester’s motion for attorney’s fees; concluding the requester, who had sought copies of portions of his A-file and related records, was not “eligible” for fee recovery since he did not “substantially prevail”; explaining the “Court never ordered relief to Plaintiff,” who ultimately filed a notice of voluntary dismissal, and the requester’s alternative “catalyst theory” argument failed because he could not demonstrate “causation”; noting the government’s processing delays were “neither unexplained nor unusually long,” especially in light of a “uncontroverted backlog,” and were instead more likely the result of “administrative delays . . . as well as the necessity of inter-agency searches and responses”; noting further how the government has started processing “prior to the lawsuit being filed.”

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 Feb. 5 & 6, 2026

Feb. 6, 2026

Finkelstein v. Nat’l Insts. of Health (D.D.C.) — granting the requester’s motion for attorney fees and costs and awarding the full amount requested, $36,973.65; concluding the requester was “eligible” for a fee award and “substantially prevailed” under the “catalyst theory” because the agency (1) “repeatedly refused to provide an estimated date of completion,” (2) “categorically denied [in its Answer] that ‘Plaintiff is entitled to . . . any relief whatsoever,’” (3) left unresolved “discrepancies in the [evidentiary] record as to how and when” it “conducted its search,” and (4) “amended and re-released material . . . initially withheld from disclosure” after the requester “challenged some . . . redactions”; concluding also that the requester was “entitled to fees” because the requester is an “investigative journalist” and sought records that would serve the public interest, did not otherwise have a private or “purely commercial” interest in disclosure, and the government did not have a reasonable basis for its withholdings; rejecting the agency’s challenge to the reasonableness of the requester’s sought-after fee amount.

Feb. 5, 2026

Informed Consent Action Network v. Food & Drug Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s Open America motion to “stay proceedings for eighteen months due to significant records demands imposed on Defendants by a district court in Texas”; rejecting the requester’s argument, “[a]t the outset,” that the FOIA denies courts the authority to authorize judicial stays; noting, with respect to the existence of “exception circumstances,” that the agencies remain “subject to increasing production rates . . . ranging from a total of 90,000 to 180,000 pages per month” in other litigation, and these orders have significantly impacted available resources for processing other requests; noting also the agencies’ efforts to “triage the substantial demands” of this other ongoing litigation; concluding the government has otherwise demonstrate “due diligence” in complying with the FOIA, whether considered in general or with respect to the specific request at issue.

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