FOIA Advisor

Court opinion issued Sept. 23, 2025

Court Opinions (2025)Allan BlutsteinComment

Gov’t Accountability & Oversight v. SEC (D.D.C.) -- partially granting SEC’s summary judgment motion in case concerning internal emails withheld under Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege; finding that the SEC adequately justified using the privilege for records related to climate rulemaking, and adequately addressed foreseeable harm and segregability; however, the agency failed to justify withholdings for three entries vaguely described as concerning “various rulemakings.”

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

FOIA News: Monday Morning FOIA Commentary

FOIA News (2025)Kevin SchmidtComment

ICE May Be Breaking the Law to Stonewall Reporters

By Dave Levinthal, Columbia Journalism Review, Sept. 22, 2025

Since late December, J. Dale Shoemaker, a reporter for the Investigative Post, a nonprofit newsroom based in Buffalo, has filed seventeen Freedom of Information Act requests with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection to guide his deep dives into federal law enforcement activity, deportation actions, and ICE detention centers in upstate New York. In return, he says, he has gotten only documents that were redacted beyond comprehension, or nothing at all. “I have not received a satisfactory response to a single one of them,” Shoemaker said.

Ryanne Mena, of the Los Angeles Daily News, sent ICE a FOIA request on January 24 for all grievance forms filed by detainees at facilities in Adelanto, California, between 2016 and early 2025. Nearly eight months later, she said, she’s received nothing: ICE “has failed to provide me with an estimated date of production despite repeated requests.”

Read more here.

FOIA follies: How the deep state avoids transparency

By Mike Chamberlain, Washington Examiner, Sept. 22, 2025

* * *

But to make FOIA requests with any frequency is to encounter a variety of glitches, delays, misunderstandings, frustrating redactions, and more. Sometimes, these incidents are simple mishaps. Other times, they look like intentional stalls and mistakes to slow the process in the hope that the requester gets discouraged and goes away.

And many do go away because when a federal agency is uncooperative with FOIA requests, the ultimate recourse is to sue. For organizations like mine, Protect the Public’s Trust, that’s part of what we do. We are built to pursue information into court. For most news organizations whose entire legal budget is reserved for libel, plagiarism, and copyright infringement (let alone for private citizens without legal budgets), the legal costs are prohibitive.

Read more here.

Court opinion issued Sept. 18, 2025

Court Opinions (2025)Allan BlutsteinComment

Crow Creek Sioux Tribe v. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Servs. (D. S.D.) -- awarding plaintiff $27,484 in attorney’s fees and costs after finding it was both eligible and entitled to such an award; as to eligibility, the court concluded that the lawsuit was the catalyst for the agency’s delayed response, noting that the agency did not begin searching for records until nearly two months after the complaint was filed and did not attempt to extend the statutory deadline; regarding entitlement, the court determined that plaintiff’s request served a significant public interest, involved no commercial motive, and that the government lacked a reasonable legal basis for the delay; lastly, the court deemed the requested fees largely reasonable, except for time spent on an unfiled summary judgment motion, which warranted a 50 percent reduction.

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 Sept. 16, 2025

Court Opinions (2025)Allan BlutsteinComment

Brown v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- finding that: (1) the FBI performed an adequate search for records concerning plaintiff’s 1995 arrest; (2) the FBI, DEA, and EOUSA properly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) to redact identifying information about special agents, local law enforcement personnel, and third parties mentioned or of investigative interest; (3) FBI properly invoked Exemption 7(E) to protect “nonpublic coordination with other government agencies” and “sensitive information contained within FBI FD-515 forms”; (4) as an alternative basis for Exemptions 6 and 7(C), DEA properly relied on Exemption 7(F) to protect names and identifying information of DEA agents, and the EOUSA properly used the same exemption protected names and identifying information of individuals who were interviewed by the FBI; and (5) the FBI failed to adequately describe, let alone justify, withholding some pages that may have been withheld in full.

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 Sept. 15, 2025

Court Opinions (2025)Allan BlutsteinComment

Azizi v. Noem (E.D. Cal.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s FOIA claim seeking access to “aggregate data and statistics related to humanitarian parole applications for Afghanistan citizens and nationals,” because plaintiffs lacked standing to litigate a FOIA request submitted by their attorney on his own behalf.

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

FOIA News: USAID plans global "still interested" notice

FOIA News (2025)Ryan MulveyComment

According to a notice slated for publication in the Federal Register, the U.S. Agency for International Development (“USAID”) will be opening a global “still interested” inquiry for all FOIA requests submitted prior to January 20, 2025. Further details can be found in the notice. The notice indicated that, due to reorganization efforts, “[m]ost subject matter experts and record custodians are no longer available, which will particularly limits USAID’s ability to locate, review, and release records for prior year requests in a timely manner.”

The Department of Energy came under considerable fire last month when it announced it was undertaking the same type of global inquiry (see here and here) with an eye to administratively closing requests in the agency’s FOIA backlog. The agency’s efforts are now the subject of litigation brought by American Oversight.