Monthly Roundup: January 2025

Below is a summary of the notable FOIA court decisions and news from last month, as well as a look ahead to FOIA events in February.

Court decisions

We identified and posted 12 decisions in the month of January. Of note, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in Human Rights Def. Ctr v. U.S. Park Police that a district court had no inherent judicial authority to prevent a FOIA requester from disclosing, disseminating, or making use of Exemption 6-protected information that the agency inadvertently released. In reaching its decision, the D.C. Circuit acknowledged but gave no weight to a 2022 Tenth Circuit ruling that affirmed a district court’s “clawback” order. The D.C. Circuit expressed no opinion as to whether a court may claw back inadvertently released documents that are “subject to any independent legal prohibition on disclosure such as applies to classified documents”; it also declined to consider appellant’s argument that the district court’s order violated the First Amendment.

In a less significant (but arguably more entertaining) decision, a court in the Northern District of Illinois rebuked the U.S. Immigration for Customs Enforcement for redacting information from a publicly filed document readily available on a public docket. The court pulled no punches in its opinion, stating that the redactions were “egregious,” “ludicrous” “preposterous,” and a “blatant misuse of exemptions” that “defies comprehension” and “screams of bad faith.” See Stevens v. HHS (N.D. Ill.).

Top news

• FOIA reading rooms went offline at several agencies, including OSTP, OMB, CEQ, following President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025.

• A White House-ordered hiring freeze has significantly reduced the number of available government FOIA jobs.

• The sponsors of Sunshine Week announced an in-person FOIA conference on March 19-20.

• DOJ/OIP posted two ”updated” sections of the FOIA Guide: Exemption 4 and Reverse FOIA.

February calendar

Feb. 4: D.C. Circuit hears argument in Hettena v. CIA, No. 24-5110, a case in which appellant disputes the agency’s redactions to a 2005 OIG report about the death of a suspected Iraqi terrorist at Abu Ghraib prison.

Feb. 5: DOJ/OIP’s virtual Advanced Freedom of Information Act Training for government employees and contractors.

Feb. 7: Deadline for agencies receiving 50 requests or less in fiscal year 2023 that choose to report to submit their Chief FOIA Officer Report to OIP.

Feb. 12: D.C. Circuit hears argument in Am. First Legal Found. v. Dellinger, 24-5168, which raises the issue of whether 5 U.S.C. § 1216(c) compels the Office of Special Counsel to investigate any allegation of an arbitrary and capricious withholding of records under FOIA.

Court opinions issued Jan. 30 & 31, 2025

January 31, 2025

Day v. DOD (D.D.C.) — concluding that EOUSA, USMS and INTERPOL Washington properly relied on Exemptions 6, 7(C) and 7(E) to withhold records concerning plaintiff that were referred by DOD’s Office of Inspector General; further finding that all agencies released reasonably segregable information to plaintiff.

January 30, 2025

Power the Future v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s combined summary judgment motion and motion to dismiss; holding that (1) the plaintiff’s expedited processing claim was moot and the court lacked jurisdiction because all requested records had been released, (2) the plaintiff’s claim for costs and fees was premature and needed to be resolved though a post-judgment motion, and (3) the agency properly applied Exemption 6 and the FOIA’s foreseeable-harm requirement to withhold the names of two low-level employees; deciding not to decide the parties’ dispute over whether the requester exhausted all administrative remedies before filing suit.

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

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Weekly report 2/3/25

The 90-day hiring freeze imposed by the White House on January 20, 2025, has significantly reduced the number of fillable government FOIA positions. Below are vacancies that appear to be exempt from the freeze.

• Info. Release Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 9-12, remote, closes 2/3/25 (non-public).

• Gov’t Info Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 9, Fort Jackson, SC, closes 2/3/25 (non-public).

• Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 12, Stuttgart, Germany, closes 2/10/25 (non-public).

At the local level, Prince William County Public Schools in Virginia seeks a Deputy FOIA Officer, GS 13, with an initial screening deadline of 2/10/25.

FOIA News: Updating E-FOIA reading room links

Attention FOIA Advisor readers. Our list of agency reading rooms may be incomplete or contain broken links as a result of website redesigns since January 20, 2025. We will review and update our links on a regular basis. Feel free to contact us about any problems you find.

FOIA News: OIP "updates" multiple sections of FOIA Guide

The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy has revised seven sections of its online-only Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act over the past six weeks. See list below. When we last checked the Guide in early December, we criticized OIP for excluding many new court decisions from its updates. OIP’s efforts primarily remain lackluster.

• Exemption 1 (posted Jan. 7, 2025) (“primarily includes case law, guidance, and statutes up until November 30, 2022”)

• Exemption 3 (posted Dec. 20, 2024) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until September 30, 2022”)

• Exemption 4 (posted Jan. 29, 2025) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until December 31, 2022”)

• Exemption 7(B) (posted Dec. 10, 2024) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until September 30, 2023”)

• Exemption 7(F) (posted Jan. 21, 2025) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until January 31, 2024”)

• Exclusions (posted Dec. 20, 2024) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until May 31, 2024”).

• Reverse FOIA (updated Jan. 15, 2025) (primarily includes case law . . . up until [actual cut-off date]”). What OIP’s “actual cut-off date” is for “Reverse FOIA” is a mystery. To quote Rick Perry, “oops.” Stay tuned for another update!

Job, jobs, jobs: Two more for this week

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./CPB, GS 7-9, Wash, DC, closes 1/31/25 (agency only)

Gov’t Info Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 9, Fort Jackson, SC, closes 2/3/25 (non-public).

FOIA News: More annual reports available

We have located several more annual FOIA reports published by agencies since we first posted an initial batch on January 6, 2025. Only a few warrant commentary.

• Council of the Inspectors Gen. on Integrity & Efficiency: CIGIE did not fulfill its efficiency mission in FY 2024 with respect to processing FOIA requests. The agency completed only 100 requests after starting the fiscal year with 56 requests on hand and receiving an additional 207 requests.

• Dep’t of the Interior: The Department treaded water in FY 2024, receiving 8305 requests and fulfilling 8,426 requests; its request backlog rose slightly from 4,320 in FY 2023 to 4,412 at the end of FY 2024.

• Securities & Exchange Comm’n: The SEC received 10,811 requests and processed 10,985 requests, cutting its request backlog from 819 in FY 2023 to 475 at the end of FY 2024. Although the agency’s records are often sought by commercial requesters, the agency collected a meager $311 in fees while bearing more than $13.2 million in processing costs.

• AmeriCorps

• Amtrak

• Fed. Election Comm’n

• Merit Sys. Prot. Bd.

• Millennium Challenge Corp.

All agencies are required to publish their annual reports on their websites by March 1, 2025.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Weekly report Jan. 27, 2025

The 90-day hiring freeze imposed by the White House on January 20, 2025, has predictably reduced the number of fillable FOIA positions. Below are vacancies that might be exempt from that freeze.

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 12-13, Arlington, VA, closes 1/27/25 (non-public).

Gov. Info. Specialist, Def. Intelligence Agency, GS 13, Arlington, VA, closes 1/28/25 (public).

Gov. Info Specialist, Dep’t of the Air Force, NH 3, Scott AFB, closes 1/28/25 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./USCIS, GS 12, remote, closes 1/29/25 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GG 12, Fort Meade, MD, closes 2/1/25 (public).

Info. Release Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 9-12, remote, closes 2/3/25 (non-public).

Court opinions issued Jan. 24, 2025

Am. First Legal Found. v. USDA (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that Exemption 5’s presidential communications privilege protected agency strategic plans to promote voter registration and voter participation that were submitted to the White House pursuant to an Executive Order; rejecting appellant’s argument that several agency declarations, the Executive Order, and a White House fact sheet undermined the White House’s sworn statements about the nature and use of the strategic plans.

Human Rights Def. Ctr v. U.S. Park Police (D.C. Cir.) -- (1) reversing district court’s decision that the names of police officers involved in three tort settlements were protected by Exemption 6 (and ordering their disclosure), because the agency’s showing was “wholly conclusory, lacking even minimal substantiation of the officers’ privacy interest or the potential harm from disclosing their names”; moreover, finding that the Park Police failed to meet the foreseeable harm test; and (2) vacating the district court’s order preventing plaintiff-appellant from disclosing, disseminating, or making use of the names of two settlement claimants inadvertently released; concluding that “neither FOIA nor any inherent judicial authority” enabled an agency to seek a court order to limit the effects of its error, and opining that a contrary Tenth Circuit decision neglected to properly consider “important limitations on courts’ inherent authority”; expressing no opinion as to whether a court may claw back inadvertently released documents that are “subject to any independent legal prohibition on disclosure such as applies to classified documents”, also declining to consider whether the First Amendment prevented the district court from issuing its clawback order.

NB: Congratulations to our colleague Ryan Mulvey, who filed an amicus brief for Americans For Prosperity Foundation in support of the appellant on the clawback dispute. Ryan authored an AFPF post about the case here.

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

FOIA News: FCC raises FOIA fees

On January 23, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission published a notice announcing increases to its hourly FOIA processing fees due to the government-wide salary increases on January 1, 2025.