Court opinion issued August 1, 2025

Leopold v. U.S. Secret Serv. (D.D.C.) — in a case over “documents concerning any Presidential records that were removed from the White House to Mar-a-Lago,” holding that the requester was “eligible for and entitled to a fee award,” but limiting the award to “20% of the amount claimed,” or $15,955; rejecting the government’s argument that to qualify as “eligible” for a fee award on a catalyst theory the requester must actually obtain records; on the question of entitlement, finding there was some public benefit derived from the suit, even though no further records were located or released, given the public interest in the underlying subject matter; at the same time, concluding “[t]here was a reasonable basis for Defendants’ refusal to search,” but this “is insufficiently decisive to counterbalanace” the other factors weighing in the requester’s favor; ultimately reducing the attorneys’ fee request by 80%.

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

Monthly roundup: July 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 August.

Court decisions

We posted and summarized 35 opinions for July, the second highest monthly total of the year. Two decisions from opposite sides of the country are worth revisiting. From the West Coast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court’s decision that Exemption 4 does not protect "EEO-1” reports describing the workforce composition of federal contractors. See Ctr. for Investigative Reporting v. DOL (9th Cir. July 30, 2025). However, the Circuit expressly rejected the district court’s test for determining the “commercial” nature of those reports, which consisted of evaluating whether the reports had “commercial value” and would cause competitive harm if disclosed. Rather, the Circuit held that the “plain meaning” of the term “commercial” in Exemption 4 required information to be “made to be bought and sold or . . . describes an exchange of goods or services for profit,” and that the EEO-1 reports failed to meet that standard.

The second noteworthy opinion issued in July emanates from the humid Mid-Atlantic, namely Gun Owners of Am., Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (D.D.C. July 23, 2025), in which the court permanently barred plaintiff from using certain exempt information that ATF had inadvertently released during its FOIA litigation production. Although plaintiff did not dispute the agency’s withholdings or its diligence in attempting to claw back the mistakenly released records, plaintiff opposed the government’s proposed relief on principle, arguing that it was precluded by the D.C. Circuit’s recent opinion in Human Rights Defense Center v. U.S. Park Police (D.C. Cir. Jan. 24, 2025 (vacating district court’s clawback order after determining that “neither FOIA nor any inherent judicial authority” allows an agency to seek a court order to limit the effects of an erroneous Exemption 6 disclosure). The district court notably ruled that HRDC was inapplicable to the case at hand based on differing facts, and that the U.S. Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit precedents authorized the court to exercise “equitable authority” to bar plaintiff’s use of information protected under Exemption 3 and 7(E). Further, the court held that its relief did not violate plaintiff’s First Amendment rights, an issue the D.C. Circuit declined to adjudicate in the HRDC case.

Top news

• On July 9, 2025, DOJ’s Office of Information Policy issued guidance on the disclosure-related impact of President Trump’s Executive Order No. 1303, “Restoring Gold Standard Science.”

• The Office of Government Information Services held its annual open meeting on July 23rd.

August events

Aug. 12-14: Graduate School USA training, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts.

FOIA News: The Freedom of Information Act and Deteriorating Federal Transparency Infrastructure

The Freedom of Information Act and Deteriorating Federal Transparency Infrastructure

By Amanda Teuscher, Just Security, Aug. 4, 2025

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — the nation’s primary legal tool for accessing public records — is under increasing pressure. The longstanding need for meaningful FOIA reform, including increased resources and improved practices, has been overtaken by a wave of structural rollbacks that the United States has not seen before. As I show below, good government and pro-transparency organizations like American Oversight, the nonpartisan non-profit where I work, as well as investigators and political reporters, have been documenting a rise in denials, delays, and office closures, along with an uptick in other problematic practices. Combined with a pattern of disregard for disclosure and record-keeping requirements, these developments threaten to hollow out a core pillar of government accountability – and to weaken one of the public’s most effective checks on corruption. In this way, FOIA is not simply a tool for transparency. It is a mechanism for accountability, and one that has long helped expose corrupt actions, government misconduct and waste, and undue influence while providing crucial evidence for those seeking to hold power to account. Its weakening does not merely impair public knowledge; it also reduces the likelihood that abuses will be detected, investigated, or deterred. 

Read more here.

FOIA News: Bernard Bell on FOIA and “First Party” Disclosure Requests

FOIA and “First Party” Disclosure Requests:  Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs v. DOJ

By Bernard Bell, Yale J. on Reg., Notice & Comment, Aug. 4, 2025

In Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs v. DOJ, Dkt. No. 24-5127, ─ F.4th ─,  2025 WL 2088557 (D.C. Cir. July 27, 2025), the D.C. Circuit waded into the issues of records disclosure in response to first-party FOIA requests.  Plaintiff Lawyers’ Committee represents various individual incarcerated in the federal prison system.  According to the complaint filed in the case, the Lawyers’ Committee “routinely represents individuals incarcerated in the BOP [Bureau of Prisons] in cases to uphold their civil and constitutional rights.” ¶2.  Timely access to “individual clients’ records” as well as “BOP-wide data related to compliance with the civil and constitutional rights” of the imprisoned is crucial to such an endeavor.

Read more here.

Court opinions issued July 31, 2025

Wright v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion to extend an eighteen-month Open America stay that expired in mid-April 2025 by an additional six months; concluding the Food and Drug Administration is entitled to an extended stay because “exceptional circumstances” continue to exist, namely, “court-ordered productions” in other litigation that has “created a volume of requests that vastly exceeded Congress’[s] expectation,” and a “significant reduction in workforce that was unplanned”; noting the agency has otherwise “exercised due diligence” in processing; also, denying the requester’s motion to “order President Donald J. Trump’s political appointees to personally review this case,” as such relief is unavailable under the FOIA,” but advising the requester that, given his “First Amendment right to petition his government,” he may raise grievances about the handling of his request with “political appointees within HHS and DOJ.”

Torp v. U.S. Office of Mgmt. & Budget (W.D. Mich.) -- adopting magistrate judge’s recommendation to grant summary judgment to OMB because plaintiff received all the existing forms he requested; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that OMB unreasonably excluded “the package of supporting information” submitted with those forms, noting that plaintiff “received exactly what he requested” and he “‘was free to submit a new FOIA request’”; further, rejecting plaintiff’s request for litigation costs because OMB disclosed the requested records prior to any court ruling and the delay in disclosure was explained by the difficulty in locating archived records.

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 30, 2025

Ctr. for Investigative Reporting v. DOL (9th Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that Exemption 4 did not protect reports filed by certain contractors from 2016 to 2020 describing the composition of their workforces, including employee job categories and demographics; determining that the reports did not meet “plain meaning” of “commercial” information, which the Circuit held must be “made to be bought and sold or . . . describes an exchange of goods or services for profit”; rejecting district court’s reasoning that the reports were not “commercial” because they lacked “commercial value” and would not cause competitive harm if disclosed.

N.B. As the Circuit’s opinion noted, the federal government will no longer collect these “diversity” reports—at least not for the duration of the Trump Administration. See E.O. 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” 90 Fed. Reg. 8633 (Jan. 31, 2025); see also 41 C.F.R. § 60–1.7(c), revocation proposed by Rescission of Executive Order 11246 Implementing Regulations, 90 Fed. Reg. 28472-01 (proposed July 1, 2025).

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 28-29, 2025

July 28, 2025

Glenwood Springs Citizens All. v. Dep’t of the Interior (D. Colo.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; rejecting the requester’s objections to one of the agency’s declarations “as hearsay,” and explaining that, in the FOIA context, an affidavit need not be provided by an “‘individual who participated in the actual search’”; holding the agencies conducted a reasonable search, despite not searching their headquarters offices in Washington, D.C., which were determined unlikely to hold relevant records; concluding the agencies properly invoked Exemption 4 to protect certain sales reports and escrow account calculation files, as well as Exemption 5, in conjunction with the attorney-client, attorney work-product, and confidential commercial information privileges; notably omitting any analysis vis-a-vis the agencies’ satisfaction of the foreseeable-harm standard.

Farm Labor Organizing Comm. v. Dep’t of Labor (D.D.C.) — granting in part the requester’s motion for summary judgment; holding that, as to information about certain tobacco buyers “already in the public domain,” the agency’s invocation of Exemption 4 must fail as the information is not “confidential”; noting, in its articulation of the appropriate legal standards, that under the foreseeable-harm standard most courts have required an agency to show how disclosure of Exemption 4-protected information would “harm an interest protected by this exemption, such as by causing genuine harm to . . . economic or business interests”; noting further that the agency failed to provide “non-hearsay" evidence” about the objections of certain tobacco growers, whether they treat their buyers’ identifies as confidential, and whether disclosure would harm their economic interests; declining to decide, for now, whether courts should “determine whether information is ‘confidential’ . . . [by] look[ing] only to how the party who submitted that information to the government . . . treats it”—an issue not yet addressed by any court; finally, ordering renewed briefing.

Roland v. Dep’t of Justice (N.D. Ill.) — granting the government’s motion to dismiss with prejudice; holding the pro se requester’s “frivolous” claims were moot because the FBI and DOJ Criminal Division provided responses before the filing of the complaint, the requester did not file any administrative appeals, and the complaint included no factual allegations challenging the adequacy of the agencies’ searches for responsive records.

July 29, 2025

Cury v. Dep’t of State (W.D. Wash.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding the agency properly invoked Exemption 3, in conjunction with Section 222(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which implicates records “pertaining to the issuance or refusal of vias or permits to enter the United States”; noting that, while “[t]he Ninth Circuit has not considered whether the protections of INA § 222(f) extend to visa revocation documents,” other courts of appeal have “held that they do”; rejecting the requester’s arguments not to follow the Second and Eleventh Circuits on that front.

Webster v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding the agency properly issued a Glomar response to decline to confirm or deny the existence of records about an FBI investigation into a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer assaulted by the pro se requester, a convicted January 6th participant; rejecting the requester’s argument that the FBI either waived its Glomar response by officially acknowledging an investigation into the police officer, or that the public interest in disclosure overrode any privacy interests in the fact of such investigation under Exemptions 6 and 7(C).

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

FOIA News: Recent report rehashes well-known FOIA stats

The Freedom of Information Act Is Failing Due to Government Bloat

In FY 2024, over 200,000 Freedom of Information Act requests were backlogged, according to the Government Accountability Office.

By Sophia Mandt, Reason, July 29, 2025

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a landmark law to increase government accountability, is falling short in its aim to improve transparency with American citizens, according to a recent report from Open the Books. FOIA gives the public the freedom to request government records from federal agencies, with the exception of certain information involving the White House, congressional records, confidential financial information, national security matters, and law enforcement records. In recent years, government-caused inefficiency has increased wait times for FOIA requests, which "have become so long they undercut the accountability FOIA is meant to provide," per Open the Books.   

See more here.

N.B. The Department of Justice published government-wide FOIA metrics for FY 2024 in mid-March.

Court opinions issued July 25, 2025

Wash. Lawyers' Comm. for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming summary judgment for the government, finding that: (1) Federal Bureau of Prisons did not have an unlawful policy of practice of delaying FOIA responses, crediting agency’s good-faith efforts to improve processing times and manage high request volumes; and (2) rejecting appellant’s argument that disciplinary and educational records should be released through an expedited process like medical records under the Privacy Act.

Bender v. DOT (S.D. Cal.) -- granting the government's motion for partial summary judgment because plaintiff failed to properly exhaust the administrative remedies for three of his FOIA claims; specifically, plaintiff did not submit a valid appeal for his 2019 request, offered no evidence that appealing part of a 2022 request would have been futile, and incorrectly argued that a third request was merely a clarification rather than a formal submission.

Am. Wild Horse Campaign v. Bureau of Land Mgmt. (D.D.C.) (Mag. J.) -- reporting and recommending that plaintiff was both eligible for and entitled to attorney’s fees, noting that the agency changed its position on whether plaintiff’s request was reasonably described and released additional documents only after litigation commenced and the court had denied agency’s motion to dismiss; further finding that plaintiff’s billing rates were reasonable, but that several categories of billed hours—particularly those spent on post-production settlement negotiations and "fees-on-fees" work—were excessive and should be reduced.

Haleem v. DOD (D.D.C.) -- granting government’s motion for reconsideration concerning 17 pages containing “inscrutable code,” because the government’s supplemental declarations established that the code “can be deciphered by foreign intelligence actors or cyber criminals and used to evade DOD investigations, thus qualifying the pages to be withheld under Exemption 7(E).”

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 24, 2025

White v. Dep’t of Agric. (E.D. Okla.) — denying the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; holding the agency failed to demonstrate the adequacy of its search because its supporting affidavit was “conclusory” and did not “identify the agency’s search terms, the type of search performed, and d[id] not aver that all files likely to contain responsive materials were searched”; rejecting also the requester’s arguments on search adequacy and whether the term “present time” in the temporal scope of the request at issue meant “through the date of production,” as opposed to the “date of the FOIA request.”

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