Court opinions issued July 1-3, 2025

July 1, 2025

Della Rocca v. U.S. Postal Serv. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning records about the shipping of election ballots, granting the agency’s renewed motion for summary judgment; holding that the Postal Service’s search was reasonable; noting the agency’s supplemental declaration addressed “gaps the Court identified in its previous order,” such as the agency’s “clarified understanding of the scope” of the requests at issue, and its search of various computer systems; describing the plaintiff’s counter-arguments as amounting to “pure speculation” about the existence of additional records; noting also that the plaintiff could not demonstrate how the agency supposedly “acted in bad faith.”  

July 3, 2025

Ctr. for Immigration Studies v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the plaintiff’s cross-motion for summary judgment; holding that HHS failed to conduct an adequate search for records reflecting the “zip code for each sponsor associated with [any] unaccompanied alien child that the agency could not reach after [a] ‘safety and wellbeing call’”; surmising, based on media reports, that the agency, after liberally construing the request and considering the plaintiff’s clarification (i.e., “additional ‘helpful’ information”), should have “produced a list of tens of thousands [of] zip code, including the same zip code multiple times when more than one child potentially resided within that area”; rejecting HHS’s alternative “hypothetical” invocation of Exemption 6 and casting doubt on whether it could actually succeed.

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

Monthly roundup: June 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 July.

Court decisions

We identified and posted 16 opinions in June—twice as many as in May. Two cases are worth revisiting. In FOIAConsciousness.com v. NARA (N.D. Cal., June 30, 2025), which involved a request for a copy of the Zapruder film, the court blessed NARA’s three-part access scheme: (1) providing viewing access in Maryland and allowing copies to be made for requester’s own use; (2) allowing requester to hire an individual to visit Maryland to make self-serve copies; and (3) allowing requesters to order copies through selected vendors, but requiring permission from any copyright holders that may exist. The court reasoned that vendor-facilitated copies were not “readily reproducible” in the absence of a copyright holder’s permission. The second notable case is S. Envtl. Law Ctr. v. Tenn. Valley Auth. (E.D. Tenn.), which curiously relied on a non-FOIA case in deciding that plaintiff lacked standing to pursue a FOIA claim on the grounds that it failed to present sufficient evidence of its purported informational injury.

Although excluded from our opinions list, we note that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a two-page order on June 6th that limited discovery in a FOIA case against DOGE.

Top news

• Amtrak became the first agency to propose amendments to their FOIA regulations since President Trump took office on January 20, 2025.

• The federal FOIA Advisory Committee met on June 12, 2025, and it is now less than one year away from completing its term on June 11, 2026.

• Bill Moyers, an influential journalist and early FOIA supporter, died at age 91.

July events

July 4: FOIA signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, effective one year later.

July 10: DOJ/OIP. Privacy Consideration Training.

July 15: DOJ/OIP. Continuing Freedom of Information Act Education Training.

July 23: OGIS annual public meeting

July 25: Agency FY25 Q3 Data Due.

July 28-30: Management Concepts, The Privacy Act and The Freedom of Information Act Training.

July 30: Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Navigating FOIA and Records Requests.

Court opinion issued June 30, 2025

Animal Partisan v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.D.C.) — denying requester’s fee motion; concluding that, while the requester “has established its eligibility for attorneys’ fees and costs [under the “catalyst” theory] . . . it has not demonstrated that it is entitled to such fees”; noting the “information obtained” by the requester “appears only marginally” likely to benefit the public because “many of the records sought were likely already in the public domain”; noting further that the FBI “was neither recalcitrant in its opposition nor obdurate in its behavior,” “promptly turned over the requested records” after the lawsuit was filed, and even conducted supplemental searches upon request; concluding, on the whole, that the agency “had a reasonable basis for initially withholding . . . under Exemption 7(A),” too.

FOIAConsciousness.com v. NARA (N.D. Cal.) -- holding that NARA did not violate FOIA by requiring plaintiff to submit proof of permission from a copyright holder—in this case, the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas— before facilitating the copying of the copyrighted Zapruder film “because such copies, of which NARA facilitates the reproduction, are not “readily reproducible” in the absence of permission; further, reasoning that plaintiff “did not identify anything in FOIA or the caselaw to indicate that Congress intended a records designation to trump copyrights held by third parties,” and that plaintiff “also did not say why FOIA would require agencies to produce copies in a manner that would open them up to liability under the copyright laws.”

[RPM: For those you might be interested, FOIA Advisor’s own Ryan Mulvey filed an amicus brief on behalf of Americans for Prosperity Foundation in the Sixth Circuit last month, which addresses, in relevant part, the interaction of the FOIA and the Copyright Act, and concludes that copyright claims can’t be used as grounds for withholding.]

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

FOIA News: Happy birthday, FOIA

On this day fifty-nine years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act; its effective date was delayed to the following year. So, happy 59th or 58th birthday to FOIA, depending on how you count. See the statute’s legislative history here, courtesy of National Security Archive.

Court opinion issued June 27, 2025

S. Envtl. Law Ctr. v. Tenn. Valley Auth. (E.D. Tenn.) -- questionably holding that plaintiff lacked standing to pursue FOIA claim because it failed to present sufficient evidence of its purported informational injury, inexplicably relying on U.S. Supreme Court’s non-FOIA decision in Transunion LLC v. Ramirez.

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

Court opinion issued June 24, 2025

Levitt v. IRS (N.D. Ala.) -- deciding that: (1) IRS reasonably interpreted plaintiff’s request for “any and all correspondence related to the FPA [Final Partnership Adjustment] sent to both the Taxpayer and PR [Partnership Representative]” as seeking only correspondence actually sent to both parties; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that the phrase “sent to both the Taxpayer and PR” was merely a descriptor for the FPA itself, reasoning that plaintiff had already defined the term “FPA” earlier in the request; further noting that plaintiff could simply submit a new request if he wanted internal agency correspondence about the FPA; and (2) the fact that agency’s FOIA production did not include any records “that tend to prove or disprove that the Taxpayer or PR received the FPA,” as plaintiff requested, did not undermine the adequacy of IRS’s search.

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

FOIA News: Amtrak issues interim updates to FOIA regulations

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) has issued an interim final rule that updates its FOIA addresses, increase the FOIA fees on the fee schedule, and update procedures for filing FOIA requests. Of note, the rule increases fees for search and processing time from $38 per hour to $50 per hour. This rule is effective September 29, 2025. Comments must be received by August 29, 2025.

FOIA News: Bill Moyers, LBJ's press secretary and early FOIA supporter, dies at 91

Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary turned acclaimed TV journalist, dead at 91

By Frazier Moore, AP, June 26, 2025

Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died Thursday at age 91.

Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former CEO of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Moyers’ son William said his father died at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York after a “long illness.”

Moyers’ career ranged from youthful Baptist minister to deputy director of the Peace Corps, from Johnson’s press secretary to newspaper publisher, senior news analyst for “The CBS Evening News” and chief correspondent for “CBS Reports.”

Read more here.

NB: Mr. Moyers drafted a signing statement for President Johnson on enacting the FOIA on July 4, 1966. See Moyers’ version and LBJ’s handwritten edits here.

FOIA News: IRS staff reductions are delaying FOIA responses, reports Captain Obvious

Staffing Cuts Slow IRS FOIA Processing

By Lauren Loricchio, Tax Notes, June 25, 2025

The Trump administration’s workforce reorganization efforts are slowing down Freedom of Information Act processing at the IRS, which could lead to bigger backlogs.

Because so many employees participated in the deferred resignation program, “we have lost many of our experienced [FOIA functional coordinators] and new people are being trained to take over. This is causing a delay in processing the backlog of FOIA requests,” an employee in the IRS Disclosure Office told Tax Notes via email.

FOIA functional coordinators are the employees in each IRS business unit who search for records that are responsive to FOIA requests.

Records obtained by Tax Notes through a FOIA request show that the IRS also fired probationary employees in the office that administers its privacy and records policy and initiatives and ensures compliance with FOIA.

The records show that at least 25 employees in the IRS Office of Privacy, Governmental Liaison, and Disclosure (PGLD) accepted a deferred resignation program offer from the Office of Personnel Management. There were 665 employees in PGLD as of March 14.

According to the records, five government information specialists in PGLD were among more than 7,000 IRS employees fired in February after President Trump took office.

Read more here.

ICYMI, DOJ skips another FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy failed to send a representative to the federal FOIA Advisory Committee’s meeting on June 12, 2025, the second consecutive committee meeting OIP has missed since its director was ousted in early March. OIP’s continued absence did not go unnoticed. Of note, OGIS director and Committee Chair Alina Semo jumped into a discussion about a draft recommendation aimed at OIP and remarked that “we obviously have a vacancy on the FOIA Advisory Committee which is occupied by the director of the Office of Information Policy. There is no director currently or acting directing. As I understand it they’re waiting for confirmation of a new associate attorney general to whom OIP staff reports . . . .” FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting, YouTube (June 12, 2025), https://www.youtube.com/live/59PYN88FCpw (45:14-45:38).

The President’s nominee for Associate Attorney General, Stanley Woodward, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 12-10 vote —coincidentally, on June 12, 2025. The bylaws of the FOIA Advisory Committee provide that government members “should”— not must—include “one representative from the Department of Justice, Office of Information Policy” (not necessarily the director) Thus, the Archivist of the United States could lawfully appoint an OIP staff member to temporarily serve on the committee if DOJ were interested in participating (which it clearly is not). Moreover, the Committee’s bylaws do not prevent AOTUS from filling OIP’s traditional seat with an employee from another agency. The FOIA Advisory Committee has lost four government members since its latest term began in September 2024. None have been replaced.