FOIA News: Webinar for immigration FOIAs

The National Immigration Litigation Alliance will host a panel discussion on August 20, 2025, on how to file, appeal, and litigate immigration-related requests for records maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. See details here.

Court opinion issued Aug. 6, 2025

Driggs v. CIA (E.D. Va.) -- in case involving records about Americans allegedly held as prisoners of war following the Korean and Vietnam Wars, deciding that: (1) plaintiffs waived their right to challenge redactions to a partially declassified “Critical Assessment” based on their representations in two joint status reports that limited the parties’ disputed issues; (2) one plaintiff was precluded from challenging Exemption 1 and 3 redactions made to another report (“Review of the Charges”), because same plaintiff lost an earlier case involving same report; (3) government properly relied on Exemptions 1 and 3 to withhold the disputed report, and plaintiff’s allegations of bad faith in the creation of that report over 25 years ago were legally irrelevant.

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

FOIA News: How Private Detectives Use FOIA

FOIAengine Tracks Three Private Eyes on the Trail of Short-Seller Culper Research

By John Jenkins, Law St. Media, Aug. 6, 2025

Brian Willingham is a licensed private investigator in New York, ID# 1000149418.  He runs an investigative agency called Diligentia Group.  The company’s motto is “We Find Evidence That Normal People Can’t.”  

* * *

Apart from sharing a furtive line of work, all three detectives have something else in common:  They are using the federal Freedom of Information Act to conduct counter-surveillance on behalf of anonymous clients.

The use of FOIA proxy requesters is common and well known.  We first bumped into the above three investigators a few weeks ago, while researching our story about the activist short-seller Christian Lamarco; his firm, Culper Research; and the mysterious “Jeff Bourland.”  (See “Some Research Into Short-Seller Culper Research.”)   

Read more here.

Court opinions issued Aug. 4, 2025

Power the Future v. White House Council on Envtl. Quality (D.D.C.) -- finding that plaintiff’s request for all emails sent or received by one employee over nearly three years was “unreasonably burdensome” (and therefore not reasonably described as required by FOIA ), because the agency estimated that processing the request “would require 21,870 hours, or 911 workdays, if all current FOIA Specialists employed by the Agency processed the request full-time”; further taking into account that the agency employee held a “high-level position” and his emails “would likely implicate numerous FOIA exemptions and require time-consuming internal review and consultation with the White House Counsel’s Office.”

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- concluding the agency’s use of Glomar and its categorical withholding of any responsive documents under Exemptions 6 and 7(C) was unjustified; explaining “DOJ’s Glomar response was not justified here for two reasons”: (1) the information at issue is already in the public domain, having been disclosed in other ligation through testimony, and (2) there is no evidence that confirming or denying the existence of responsive records would cause any harm to privacy interests; explaining further that the agency’s categorical withholdings were inappropriate because the privacy interests at stake are diminished and the agency has “underplay[ed] the relevant public interest.”

Rute v. DOJ (E.D. Tex.) -- ruling that: (1) plaintiff failed to administratively appeal denials from DOJ’s Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and the Criminal Division, thus warranting dismissals of his claims against those agencies with prejudice; and (2) FBI properly refused to confirm or deny the existence of “public integrity investigations” against named third parties from Collin County, Texas; and (3) FBI failed to conduct adequate searches for records related to public integrity investigations against unnamed elected officials, attorneys, or law firms in Collins County, Texas, because the agency should have inputted the term “Collin County” into its Central Records System conjunction with the term “public integrity” to narrow the 800,000 results yielded by the latter term.

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

FOIA News: Tips for lowering FOIA fees

5 Tips for Slashing FOIA Costs (Including How One Reporter Lowered a Records Request Fee from $2,800 to Just $29)

By Rowan Philp, Global Investigative Journalism Network, Aug. 5, 2025

Reporters in many countries with freedom of information access (FOI) laws sometimes receive massive fee quotes from government agencies to retrieve, duplicate, redact, or export extensive public records they’ve requested.

“Emphasize that you don’t want to over-burden them… If something takes less time for them, it means less cost for you.” — Sharon Lurye, Associated Press data journalist 

But it turns out that, with a little research and negotiation, reporters can sometimes slash the cost of obtaining records bundles and speed up the government’s response in the process.

Experts say that reporters should not automatically accept large fees quoted by FOI officers, and should remember that these officials are typically concerned with their estimated time burden, and not the cost figure. Also, keep in mind that reducing the cost of your request by reducing their time burden will likely shorten the time until you receive the files you want.

Read more here.

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.