FOIA News: OGIS Annual Open Meeting tomorrow

The Office of Government Information Services will hold its annual public meeting on Wednesday, July 23, 2025, from 11am to noon. Registration information, presentation slides, and a livestream link for this virtual meeting are available here.

Court opinion issued July 21, 2025

Ezeah v. Exec. Office for U.S. Att’ys. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s unopposed motion for summary judgment; holding the agency “partly carried” its burden to demonstrate it conducted a search reasonable calculated to locate responsive records, but that it left unaddressed several items of the request; granting the government the opportunity to “fill in holes” in its explanation of its searches before entering partial judgment in favor of the requester.

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

Court opinions issued July 18, 2025

Proj. for Privacy & Surveillance v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that six intelligence agencies properly relied on Exemption 1 in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records regarding the “unmasking” or “upstreaming” of 48 then-current or former members of congressional intelligence committees; rejecting requester’s argument that agencies were required to search for records before issuing Glomar responses or that those responses did not meet the criteria of Executive Order 13,526 or Exemption 1.

Fouts v. Exec. Office for U.S. Attorneys (S.D.N.Y.) -- denying pro se plaintiff’s motion to reconsider court’s order transferring plaintiff’s case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, because plaintiff “failed to demonstrate that the Court overlooked any controlling law or factual matter”; noting that plaintiff did not reside in the Southern District of New York and his complaint did not indicated that the disputed records were situated there.

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

Court opinions issued July 17, 2025

Brodsky v. FBI (7th Cir.) -- affirming district’s court decision that FBI properly relied on Exemptions 3, 6, 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E) to withhold certain records concerning requester’s status as a confidential informant, as well to support agency’s Glomar response; declining to change the Circuit’s standard of review in FOIA cases, which calls for de novo review as to whether there was “an adequate factual basis to make a legally sound decision,” and then clear error review of “the court’s conclusions that the documents were properly withheld or redacted under the exemptions”; rejecting requester’s argument that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024) affects the weight a court may give to declarations made by agency officials in a FOIA case.

Gage v. EEOC (9th Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that agency properly issued an Exemption 3 Glomar response and that requests for “Gage’s charge file . . . were moot because the EEOC produced all non-exempt documents; further ruling that district court did not abuse its discretion by denying discovery.

Carlborg v. Dep't of Navy (S.D. Cal.) -- in case concerning records of plaintiff’s involuntary discharge from the military, determining that: (1) plaintiff’s FOIA claims arising from one batch of requests were precluded under the doctrine of res judicata, but that other claims were not; and (2) government established that it performed adequate searches in response to plaintiff’s multiple requests, and that the Navy was not required to create screenshots of records already produced to plaintiff; and (3) government properly relied on Exemption 6 to withhold the names, social security numbers, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, military rank, and signatures of third parties and government employees

Moslem v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- denying pro se inmate’s recusal motion because plaintiff’s claims of bias merely boiled down to allegations of judicial mistakes, which falls short of the disqualification standard set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 455; ruling that plaintiff did not have standing to challenge Tax Division’s response to a request identified in plaintiff’s Complaint, because the request was not submitted by plaintiff or by anyone claiming it was submitted on plaintiff’s behalf; and denying plaintiff’s various other requests for relief on both procedural grounds and on the merits.

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 July 16, 2025

Kinnally v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (S.D. Cal.) -- dismissing case as moot because plaintiff’s complaint sought only to compel production of records, which the agency ultimately released after lawsuit was filed; noting that plaintiff’s failure to respond to agency’s motion further supported dismissal without prejudice and without leave to amend the complaint.

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 July 15, 2025

Brown v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.C. Cir.) — affirming the district court; holding that the FBI conducted an adequate search and properly interpreted a request for “witness accounts, narratives, or statements” to implicate, “in agency parlance,” only “formal witness interviews and memorialized FD-203 forms,” and not such materials as “records of 911 calls,” logs or recordings of “police radio communications,” or “raw recordings of witness interviews”; holding further that the FBI’s properly invoked Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(D); rejecting, specifically, the requester’s arguments that the agency had not satisfied the foreseeable-harm standard; finally, affirming the district court’s denial of in camera review.

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

Court opinions issued July 14, 2025

Sharpe v. U.S. Fed. Highway Admin. (9th Cir.) (unpublished)— vacating the district court’s judgment, dismissing appeal as moot, and remanding the case because the agency produced over two thousand pages of documents during appeal after initially refusing to process the request for being too vague.

Wright v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for partial summary judgment in a case about records related to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System; concluding HHS and CDC conducted adequate searches because they were “conducted in good faith and target[ed] the record systems most likely to contain the requested information,” and even involved subject-matter “experts” to help “define search terms”; noting the agencies undertook supplemental search efforts, even though not required, thus demonstrating “responsiveness to [the requester’s] concerns”; accepting the government’s arguments that the requester had tried to expand his request by demanding “unrelated and unduly burdensome” additional searches for communications “with other government agencies and third parties”; reaffirming that “an agency satisfies its FOIA obligations when it provides requesters with information that is already publicly available, especially when the alternative would be to duplicate materials already accessible”; characterizing the requester’s arguments—including those related to searches of personal email accounts—as “mere speculation,” albeit “strongly worded”'; concluding further that the agencies properly withheld information under Exemptions 5 and 6 because the requester “has effectively waived any objection” and the agencies’ “justifications for withholding . . . are adequately supported.”

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

FOIA News: FBI's request portal is up and running

The FBI’s electronic FOIA request system eFOIPA is now operational after an outage of several days. Happy requesting.

FOIA News: FBI's request portal unplugged

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s eFOIPA portal has been inoperable all weekend, returning an error message when accessed. Kevin Bogardus of EE News first reported the problem on X on Saturday evening. FOIA Advisor will update readers on the status of its portal, which we can only hope is a temporary glitch.

FOIA News: FDA seeks comments on certification form

The Food and Drug Administration published a Federal Register notice today seeking public comments on its use of a certification of identity form for first-party FOIA requests and Privacy Act requests. Comments are due on or before September 9, 2025.