Court opinions issued Mar. 25 & 26, 2026

Mar. 25, 2026

Informed Consent Action Network v. Nat’l Cancer Inst. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning records of the National Cancer Institute’s involvement with the publication and later retraction of a medial journal article, granting in part the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding, first, that the agency’s search for responsive records was reasonable; noting, “that [given] Informed Consent was seeking email communications to and from a particular individual, it is hard to imagine what else the agency could do outside of search that individual’s inbox for the relevant emails,” which was done; further holding that the agency had not yet adequately justified its use of Exemption 4 because it failed to explain the basis for its declarant’s personal knowledge of the relevant medical journal’s privacy practices and, thus, had not established why the records at issue were “confidential”; permitting the agency an opportunity to “file additional evidence” before another round of briefing.

WP Co., LLC v. Nat’l Highway Traffic Safety Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s motion for summary judgment in a case concerning access to records “related to the safety of motor vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems”; holding that NHTSA properly invoked Exemption 4 to withhold “Tesla’s version and narrative information” as found in accident report data, but improperly redacted “information reported by other manufacturers” and “Tesla’s [operational design domain] information”; noting various “confidential treatment requests” from manufacturers, as well as NHTSA’s “subsequent determinations” to treat certain information as confidential, may be “indicative of the entities’ actual and customary treatment, but they are not, without more, sufficient grounds to conclude that the agency met its burden under FOIA”; noting also that, for the “confidential” analysis, what matters is “how the particular party customarily treats the information, not . . . the industry as a whole”; concluding, however, that Tesla’s “own submission fills the factual gaps in the agency’s declaration,” at least for some categories of Tesla-submitted data; rejecting the requester’s argument that Tesla drivers’ access to “individual data points” through their “phone applications or via their car’s touch screen” is sufficient to vitiate the confidentiality of that same information when submitted to the government at an aggregate level; agreeing with “other courts in this district that the government’s assurances of confidentiality are, at a minimum, ‘relevant to the confidentiality analysis,’” and here the agency’s “practice of ‘routinely’ granting Tesla’s requests [for confidential treatment], with few exceptions, established reasonable and actual reliance interests on Tesla’s part”; agreeing also with various courts that the foreseeable-harm standard requires showing how disclosure would “pose ‘genuine harm to the submitter’s economic or business interests . . . thereby dissuading others from submitting similar information to the government’”; holding that, at least with Tesla’s operational design domain information, there remained “a genuine dispute of material fact . . . over whether disclosure . . . would result in reasonably foreseeable harm”; with respect to Exemption 6, as applied to information pertaining to the “specific location of . . . reported crashes, including the latitude, longitude, address, and zip code of the accidents,” concluding the “private interests at stake here appear, at most, barely greater than de minimis because the requested spreadsheet data is not, in and of itself identifying,” and “the public interest that the Post has identified is not insignificant”; ultimately concluding, however, that further information about “the privacy interests at stake” was needed to “properly weigh those interests against the public’s”; finally, holding the agency met its burden vis-a-vis segregability.

Schiff v. Internal Revenue Serv. (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; concluding the IRS conducted an adequate search for records responsive to plaintiff’s first FOIA request, which concerned a press conference hosted by the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement; laying out how the agency employed its eDiscovery team for an electronic search, as well as directing officials to conduct manual record searches; deciding the agency failed to justify its use of Exemptions 5 (in conjunction with the deliberative-process privilege), 7(A), and 7(E); noting the IRS’s briefing speaks only in “broad strikes” and without any “detail,” and fails altogether to address segregability and foreseeable harm; noting further, with Exemption 7, that the IRS failed even to “specify what investigation or enforcement proceeding disclosure would disrupt” or “what [law enforcement] technique or procedure is ‘at stake’”; with respect to the second FOIA request at issue, holding that plaintiff reasonably described most of the records sought, even if the resulting volume of potentially responsive records might be voluminous, but did fall short of the reasonable-description requirement for one portion of the request seeking any “materials that ‘mention’ the ‘tax authority, or authorities’ of the United States and four other countries.”

Mar. 26, 2026

Office of the Fed. Pub. Defender v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s motion for reconsideration of a summary-judgment order rejecting DOJ’s use of Exemption 7(E), despite the agency’s continued failure “to meaningfully engage with the text of the exemption and basic line-drawing questions that result from [its] position”; clarifying the previous order does not apply to Exemption “7(E) materials that Plaintiff . . . was not challenging”; further amending the summary-judgment order to hold that the government had established certain categories of information concerning, inter alia, BOP “deputy information,” “means of communications” during inmate “transport,” and other deputy assignment details, reflected law enforcement techniques and procedures given their “nature” or tendency to “reveal generalized procedures” that are part of a broader “Operational Plan”; concluding, moreover, that the government demonstrated “logically how release of the requested information might create a risk of circumvention of the law.”

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. 24, 2026

Watkins Law & Advocacy, PLLC v. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs (D.D.C.) — on remand from Watkins Law & Advocacy, PLLC v. Dep’t of Justice, 78 F.4th 436 (D.C. Cir. 2023), in a case involving access to records about a VA background check system intended to identify veterans and benefits beneficiaries as “barred from possessing firearms” due to deficient “mental capacity,” granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding, firstly, that the agency properly withheld most records under Exemption 5 and the attorney-client privilege, as they reflected, inter alia, “legal advice . . . regarding compliance with the Brady Act information sharing provisions” when reporting information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System; noting the agency complied with the D.C. Circuit’s instructions for remand vis-a-vis the specificity of its Vaughn index; rejecting use of attorney-client privilege for two documents, which after in camera review, were determined to lack any confidential information transmitted between an attorney and client; holding, further, that the agency’s invocation of the attorney work-produce privilege is “untimely” as it was only raised on remand and no “extraordinary circumstances” justified its assertion so late in the proceedings; finally, concluding the agency properly applied the deliberative-process privilege to all records not otherwise properly withheld under the attorney-client privilege; explaining these records related to agency deliberations regarding the interpretation and implementation of the Brady Act; intriguingly, omitting any discussion of the foreseeable-harm standard.

Achey v. Exec. Office of U.S. Att’ys (D.D.C.) — in a case brought by a pro se inmate-requester seeking access to records of his own case, granting summary judgment to the agency “in all respects expect insofar as it must produce [to the requester] an electronic copy” of one of the documents at issue because it was requested “in an electronic format” and “located” by the agency in an electronic format during a digital search; noting that “[a]ny downstream question of how the Bureau of Prisons may ‘decide[] to limit or prohibit access to the material’” sent to the requested by email “is a separate matter ‘not before this Court.’”

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case involving records about DOJ’s efforts to “obtain and centralize voter information from state election officials,” and subsequent to a prior order entering a preliminary injunction for expedited processing, ordering the agency to “accelerate its processing of [potentially responsive] records” to “1,000 pages per week,” with status reports to be filed “every two weeks” addressing interim productions; noting “the modest processing rate that DOJ has proposed—250 pages per month—stands in contrast to the remarkable speed and scope of its underlying initiative to collect and process voter data from state election officials” and is “not commensurate with the ‘importance and urgency’ of CREW’s FOIA requests.”

Pickering v. Cent. Intelligence Agency (W.D.N.Y.) — denying the agency’s motion for reconsideration of an order for in camera review in a case involving the CIA’s invocation of Glomar, in connection with Exemption 1, refusing to acknowledge or deny the existence of an FBI Form FD-302; nevertheless modifying somewhat the procedures for in camera submission to avoid defeating the purpose of the Glomar doctrine.

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. 23, 2026

Jigsaw Productions, Inc. v. U.S. Secs. & Exch. Comm’n (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning access to a recording of Elon Musk’s interview with SEC civil investigators, denying the agency’s motion for summary judgment and ordering release in part; rejecting the agency’s invocation of Exemptions 6 and 7(C) for lack of any substantial privacy interest, “much less any foreseeable harm to Musk’s privacy interests that would flow from disclosure”; noting the “contents of the interview have already been publicly released” in transcript form, the SEC has publicized its civil enforcement efforts, and “Musk has publicly discussed the SEC matter on national television.”

Informed Consent Action Network v. Food & Drug Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s motion for an Open America stay; noting, as many recent stay orders, that the FDA has been compelled by a judge in the Northern District of Texas “to produce approximately 9.1 million pages of COVID-19 vaccine records within a highly compressed timeframe,” and this “unprecedently demanding production schedule . . . far exceeds a ‘predictable’ agency workload and thus constitutes ‘exceptional circumstances’ within the meaning of FOIA”; concluding the agency has also “exercised due diligence in respond to the FOIA requests it receives, including the one at issue in this case.”

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. 19 & 20, 2026

Mar. 19, 2026

JG Law, PLLC v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; ruling, in relevant part, that Exemptions 3 and 7(E) apply to the records at issue; holding that Exemption 7(E) covers law-enforcement database codes found in certain immigration records; holding further that Exemption 3, in conjunction with Section 222(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, protect records reflecting the State Department’s adjudication of U.S. visa applications; rejecting the requester’s argument that the agencies’ Vaughn index either lacked sufficient detail or failed to provide information concerning segregability.

Mid.-Atl. Innocence Project v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment in a case involving claims under the FOIA and Privacy Act; in relevant part, rejecting the agency’s invocation of Exemption 3, in conjunction with the Child Victims’ and Child Witnesses’ Rights Act, as the underlying withholding statute’s reference to “criminal proceedings” is best read to refer only to proceedings in federal court, rather than the state-court matters implicated by the records at issue; rejecting also the agency’s use of Exemption 7(C) to redact the identities of testifying witnesses, other government witnesses, and a prosecutor, as those names were disclosed in open court during trial and are already discoverable through review of the relevant court transcripts; of note, with respect to Exemption 7(C) and the foreseeable-harm standard, rejecting the agency’s analysis for failing to account for the age of the records and the “highly speculative” nature of potential reputational risks to these third parties if the records were disclosed; concluding, however, that the agency properly invoked Exemption 7(D), and rejecting the requester’s “official acknowledgement” argument; finally, rejecting both parties’ argument with respect to the use of Exemption 7(F)

Am. Civil Liberties Union of Mich. v. U.S. Immigration & Customs Enf’t (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion to dismiss in an Administrative Procedure Act case challenging a final rule prohibiting state and local government entities from disclosing records related to ICE detainees on grounds that such records are under the federal government’s legal control; rejecting the government’s argument that the FOIA provides an adequate alternative remedy in lieu of the APA; noting that when plaintiff has tried to request records covered by the regulatory disclosure restriction from the federal government, the agency lacked any mechanism for obtaining records obtained by state and local entities, such as county jails.

Mar. 20, 2026

Dhakal v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.D.C.) — in a case brought by a pro se requester seeking access to records about himself, granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; concluding the agency conducted an adequate search, properly applied Exemptions 5, 6, 7(C), and 7(E), and justified its various Glomar responses (citing Exemptions 1, 3, 7(D), 7(E), and 7(F)); addressing also the agency’s use of exemptions under the Privacy Act; finally, agreeing with the agency that it undertook reasonable efforts to segregate out non-exempt information from the records at issue.

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. 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.