Court opinions issued Mar. 16 & 18, 2026

Mar. 16, 2026

Heritage Found. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning, in relevant part, “300,382 potentially responsive pages” of records, denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and granting in part the requester’s cross-motion; rejecting the agency’s argument that it not process the potentially responsive material because the request at issue was “unreasonably described”; explaining “the request was clear enough for the Department to locate responsive documents from some of its offices without issue”; rejecting also the agency’s claim that processing would be unduly burdensome, and noting the fact “a FOIA request implicates a large quantity of documents is insufficient, on its own, to establish that [processing] is unduly burdensome”; concluding the government failed to offer any “good reason why further search term filtering and removal of false positives cannot significantly reduce the burden of the search”; noting with approval the requester’s argument that the agency failed “to reasonably refine its searches,” such as by using “connector search terms,” or making use of “an eDiscovery tool”; ordering the agency to review a sample of the pages at issue, propose exclusionary search terms, negotiate with the requester, and run another search.

Mar. 18, 2026

Judicial Watch v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a consolidated case involving requests from Judicial Watch, the Heritage Foundation, and various press outlets for access to audio recordings of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, denying Heritage’s motion to strike a government declaration and for leave to engage in discovery vis-a-vis the parties’ dispute over plaintiffs’ eligibility for attorney’s fees; with respect to the motion to strike the government declaration filed in opposition to a fee motion, concluding Heritage’s motion “is procedurally improper” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) and, in any case, unsupported by “sufficient basis”; rejecting also Heritage’s motion for discovery; noting how “neither party is aware of any case granting discovery in a FOIA fee dispute”; explaining moreover that Heritage failed to demonstrate bad faith, either in arguing that the declarant lacked requisite personal knowledge and relied on hearsay, or by challenging the veracity of specific factual claims; noting, in closing, that Heritage’s “specific requests for discovery are deficient.”

Judicial Watch v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in the same case as above, setting out a magistrate’s recommendation that the district court deny the parties’ motions for attorney’s fees under the “catalyst theory”; on the question of eligibility, concluding the Heritage Foundation “established only that it substantially caused the release of the second recording of the Biden-Hur Interview, but not the first recording,” and that CNN and other press requesters had “not established eligibility on any basis . . . put forward”; explaining the release of the second recording appeared to be prompted by a request from counsel for the Heritage Foundation, as memorialized in one of the parties’ past joint status reports, and rejecting DOJ’s argument that such release was merely “de minimis”; further recommending that Heritage was not entitled to a fee reward despite the “significant public interest in the release of the records,” and Heritage’s status as a non-profit requester involved with the dissemination of information, because the government’s initial decision to withhold the recordings under executive privilege, as asserted by the Biden White House, was not unreasonable; stating that even if Heritage were entitled to fees, its fee award should be “zero” because it “enjoyed meager success” and did not substantiate its work or costs on the specific efforts that led to release of the second recording.

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 Mar. 12, 2026

Ananiades v. U.S. Dep't of Air Force (9h Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that the Air Force adequately searched for records that plaintiff provided to it as a contractor in 1984, noting that the relevant contract files were destroyed in 2004.

Zakarneh v. USCIS (D. Or.) -- granting summary judgment to government after determining that: (1) plaintiff’s claims for audio and video recordings of his own 2016 and 2018 immigration interviews were moot since they had already been produced; and (2) plaintiff’s remaining claims for his immigration records were barred for failure to exhaust administrative remedies because he failed to file timely agency appeals.

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 Mar. 11, 2026

Sherrod v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s second supplemental motion for summary judgment—that is, its third attempt to justify its treatment of records—in a case involving an inmate’s access to surveillance camera videotapes documenting his crimes; treating the motion as unopposed since the plaintiff “has not filed a response”; concluding that “Defendants have satisfied their burden to adduce evidence demonstrating a reasonably adequate search.”

Foreman v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment in a case involving a pro se inmate’s access to “various records related to his incarceration and medical treatment”; holding the agency properly redacted the names of certain correctional officers who interacted with the requester under Exemptions 6 and 7(C); noting the “heightened security concerns” about revealing the identifies are those officers working in the SHU context; noting also that the requester’s asserted public interest was actually a “personal interest in discerning potential defendants for his own litigation,” which should properly be pursued through civil discovery in separate litigation.

Bennett v. U.S. Postal Serv. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion to dismiss; holding the pro se incarcerated requester failed to reasonably describe the records sought in his request; explaining the request was “impermissibly vague” because, in relevant part, it sought “every piece of information about any service ever offered by the United States Postal Service”; explaining how the requester also requested “contracts” without any further specificity.

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 Mar. 10, 2026

Jewell v. DHS (W.D. Wis.) -- holding that: (1) U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement and DOJ’s Criminal Division performed adequate searches for records concerning plaintiff’s criminal conviction for distributing child pornography; and (2) DOJ properly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) to withhold records about third parties, as well as Exemption 7(F) to redact plaintiff’s name because disclosure could incite violence from other prisoners; and (3) rejecting DOJ’s supplemental use of Exemption 7(E) for the same withheld records, noting its skepticism that “criminals are actually reviewing documents from these types of investigations and gleaning insight on how to avoid detection.”

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 Mar. 9, 2026

Doe v. Dep’t of the Navy (D.D.C.) -- dismissing without prejudice a pro se plaintiff’s complaint seeking records about the Navy’s consideration of his naval officer commission application—including interview appraisal materials and board decision analyses—and documents explaining why a medical waiver was approved years after earlier denials; holding that the complaint did not clearly identify the requests at issue or plead facts showing that the Navy improperly withheld records or conducted an inadequate search, but allowing plaintiff 30 days to file amended complaint.

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 Mar. 4-Mar. 6, 2026

Mar. 6, 2026

Protect the Pub.'s Trust. v. USAID (D D.C.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s claim because the request was too vague and overbroad to allow USAID to determine which records were sought; the request asked for communications from certain USAID officials and broadly from “officials” in the White House, State, Treasury, and United Nations regarding the Taylor Force Act and U.S. funding to Palestinian territories, but it failed to identify most custodians, used imprecise terms for external officials, and left the funding scope and dates unclear.

Mar. 5, 2026

Am. Sec. Ass’n v. SEC (M.D. Fla.) -- granting in part and denying in part both parties’ summary judgment motions in a case seeking spreadsheets and similar records used by the SEC to determine penalties in its broker-dealer recordkeeping enforcement sweep; ruling that spreadsheets showing prospective penalty tiers for entities under investigation were protected opinion work product under Exemption 5, but spreadsheets reflecting final, imposed penalties and the underlying data considered were non-exempt.

McCann v. USCIS (E.D. La.) -- granting summary judgment to USCIS, holding that its supplemental declaration adequately explained the agency’s search for records concerning USCIS’s decision to issue a “Notice of Intent to Revoke Permanent Resident Status” and clarified that a disputed page had already been released.

Mar. 4, 2026

Judicial Watch, Inc. v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- concluding that DHS failed to show that it adequately searched for certain records concerning the Arizona border wall, noting that that the agency’s declarations did not sufficiently explain what systems were searched or whether it pursued leads to additional records.

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 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.