FOIA News: This and that

• A federal retiree was forced to file a FOIA request to find out the Thrift Savings Plan’s holdings in its International Stock Index Investment (“I”) Fund, per a guest essay in the the New York Times.

• The FBI has recently posted files about Pete Rose, Wallis Simpson, and Kenneth Starr.

• Government Attic has recently posed files about atomic bomb tests in the Marshall Islands, U.S. Army drug testing programs using humans, and biological warfare.

• Multiple advocacy groups sued the Department of Justice on Dec. 9th for failing to respond to requests for Office Legal Counsel records concerning the U.S. military’s lethal strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

Court opinions issued Dec. 3-4, 2025

Dec. 4, 2025

Informed Consent Action Network v. NIH (D.D.C.) -- denying plaintiff’s motion for attorneys’ fees in connection with requests submitted in 2021 for internal communications about an early COVID-19 antibody study; reasoning that the plaintiff failed to show its lawsuits caused NIH to release the records, as the agency had already begun processing the requests and delays were attributable to pandemic-related backlogs rather than litigation pressure.

Dec. 3, 2025

Musgrave v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- determining that plaintiff’s 2020 request for “[a]ll emails in the FBI email system(s) or personal email folders on personal computers . . . used by the Washington Field Office and San Francisco Field Office mentioning @DevinCow” would require an unreasonably burdensome search and was therefore an improper request; rejecting plaintiff’s post-litigation attempt to narrow the search to “active” email accounts as of 2021.

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

FOIA News: Brothers arrested for tampering with gov't databases, including FOIA info

Virginia brothers arrested for allegedly tampering with government databases

By Sam Sabin, Axios, Dec. 3, 2025

The Justice Department arrested Virginia-based twin brothers who formerly worked at a federal contractor on Wednesday for their alleged roles in deleting government databases.

Why it matters: The arrests are connected to one of the most bizarre insider threat cases the U.S. government has experienced in years.

Driving the news: Federal law enforcement arrested Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, 34, for their alleged roles in compromising or deleting dozens of government databases in February.

• The arrests follow a Bloomberg investigation published in May detailing how the brothers allegedly compromised data across several agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the General Services Administration.

The intrigue: The brothers pled guilty in 2015 to federal charges tied to data breaches at the U.S. State Department and a cosmetics company.

• They both served years-long prison sentences before getting jobs as engineers for Opexus, a federal contractor that helps process U.S. government records.

• Opexus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more here.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Defend justice

Att’y-Advisor, Dep’t of Justice/OIP (IR Litigation Staff), GS 13-15, Wash., DC, closes 12/16/25 (public).

Court opinions issued Dec. 2, 2025

Ctr. for Immigration Studies v. USCIS (D.D.C.) -- ruling that plaintiff was ineligible for attorney’s fees because it failed to show its lawsuit caused USCIS to produce requested records, which included demographic data on Special Immigrant Juvenile Status applicants; reasoning that agency’s spreadsheet production appeared to result from routine processing rather than a litigation-induced “sudden acceleration,” and that plaintiff did not demonstrate that its lawsuit prompted USCIS’s later voluntary decision to provide a key explaining the spreadsheet’s status codes.

Long v. ICE (D.D.C.) -- following four rounds of summary judgment, granting ICE’s motion for summary judgment in part and denying it in part and holding that while some continued withholdings under FOIA Exemption 7(E) were justified, ICE again failed to show that certain other withheld materials from two databases posed a risk of circumvention of the law and therefore must be released.

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

FOIA News: OIP updates December training schedule

OIP Announces New FOIA Trainings Dates for Fiscal Year 2026 (Updated)

By DOJ/OIP, FOIA Post, Dec. 2, 2025

Today, the Office of Information Policy (OIP) announces new dates for FOIA trainings that were originally scheduled during the government shutdown.  As part of its responsibility to encourage agency compliance with the FOIA, OIP offers numerous training opportunities throughout the year for agency FOIA professionals and individuals with FOIA responsibilities.

These courses are designed to offer training opportunities for personnel from all stages of the FOIA workforce, from new hires to the experienced FOIA professionals or FOIA managers.  OIP will continue to offer virtual training sessions that will be taught in real-time by OIP instructors.  We will announce more training opportunities for the spring and summer at a later date.  As Fiscal Year 2026 quickly approaches, we are excited to announce our upcoming virtual training courses. You can find these courses listed on OIP’s Training page.

Read more here.

FOIA News: CFO Council meeting on 12/15; OIP's new Director to make his debut

Chief FOIA Officers Council to Meet on December 15

NARA/OGIS, FOIA Ombuds, Dec. 1, 2025

The Chief FOIA Officers Council will meet at 10 a.m. ET on Monday, December 15. The meeting is virtual and open to Chief FOIA Officers, FOIA professionals, and the public. We invite you to either watch the livestream of the meeting on the U.S. National Archives YouTube Channel or register to attend the meeting virtually. If you wish to offer oral comments during the meeting’s public comment period you must register to attend.

The Council is co-chaired by Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) Director Alina M. Semo and Office of Information Policy (OIP) Director Sean Glendening. Plan to hear updates from OGIS and OIP as well as from the Council’s Technology Committee and Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation (COCACI). 

At the end of the meeting, interested persons will be able to appear and present oral and written statements to the Council during the public comments period. 

See original blog post here.

FOIA News: FOIA University issues white paper

On December 1, 2025, FOIA University founder Michael Sarich released a 20-page white paper entitled The SLiM Solution to a Fat Problem: Small Language Models and Human Judgment as the Cost-Effective Solution for FOIA Modernization.

Follow FOIA University on LinkedIn here.

Monthly Roundup: November 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 November.

Court opinions

We posted and summarized 11 opinions in November, the second lowest of the year to date (8 in May). Of note, the Second Circuit reversed the lower court’s ruling in Shapiro v. SSA (Nov. 26) and held that the FOIA’s limitation on fees for untimely agency responses was clearly overridden by the “notwithstanding” text of the Social Security Act’s cost-reimbursement provision, 42 U.S.C § 1306(c) (“Notwithstanding sections 552 and 552a of title 5 or any other provision of law . . . .”).

Top news

• The 43-day government shutdown ended on November 12, 2025.

• In late November, DOJ announced that 37-year-old Sean Glendening had been appointed the new Director of the Office of Information Policy on November 3rd.

• On November 20, 2025, Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) introduced a bill to create a FOIA exemption for information that tribes identify as culturally sensitive.

• The Defense Nuclear Safety Board became the first agency in 2025 to propose amendments to its FOIA regulations, as set forth in a November 24th Federal Register notice.

December calendar

Dec. 2: DOJ/OIP’s Virtual Procedural Requirements and Fees Training.

Dec. 4: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting canceled (and not expected to be re-scheduled).

Dec. 10: DOJ/OIP’s Virtual Exemption 1 and Exemption 7 Training.

Dec. 12: Deadline for agencies to submit FY 2025 Annual FOIA Report to OIP.

Dec. 15: Chief FOIA Officers Council meeting; Immigrant Legal Resource Center FOIA webinar.

Court opinions issued Nov. 25-26, 2025

Nov. 26, 2025

Shapiro v. SSA (2nd Cir.) -- reversing and vacating district court’s rulings that plaintiff was entitled to a refund of agency’s administrative processing costs and an award of attorneys’ fees and litigations costs; holding that the Social Security Act’s cost-reimbursement provision, 42 U.S.C. § 1306(c), supersedes the FOIA’s 2007 amendment that limits fees for untimely agency responses; further holding that plaintiff’s request for records about how it decides whether migraines and other headache conditions qualify for disability benefits was not “directly related” to the administration of an SSA program and therefore allowed SSA to charge plaintiff the full costs of processing fees; and concluding that because plaintiff did not obtain any meaningful relief beyond the district court’s erroneous fee decisions, he did not “substantially prevail” and was ineligible for attorneys’ fees or costs.

Nov. 25, 2025

Shapiro v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- in a painfully long 123-page opinion, granting in part and denying in part the parties’ motions for summary judgment concerning multiple requests to the FBI and OIP submitted between 2012 and 2017; determining that: (1) FBI did not justify its claim that two of plaintiff’s requests were improper or unduly burdensome; (2) OIP adequately searched for responsive records, but two of three challenged FBI searches were unreasonable because the agency failed to perform a full-text ECF search for records that merely mentioned or referred to the requested file, the FBI’s explanations for numerous missing serialized documents were insufficient, and the FBI inadequately searched for attachments referenced in produced documents; (3) FBI properly relied on Exemption 3 to withhold information covered by the Pen Register Act and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), but its justification for using the National Security Act was too conclusory; (4) FBI’s declarations were too vague and relied on labels like “draft” for one letter and an analytical report that were redacted under Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege; (5) FBI failed to justify its use of Exemption 7(A) because it did not show that the relevant investigations were actually pending or explain how disclosure would interfere with them; (6) FBI properly relied on implied confidentiality under Exemption 7(D) for foreign government agencies, third-party individuals, and local law enforcement agencies based on the seriousness of the crimes, the sources’ proximity to the investigations, and the risk of reprisal. but the agency provided only conclusory statements for its claims of express assurances of confidentiality; (7) FBI did not sufficiently demonstrate the applicability of Exemption (E) to case file numbers, but properly invoked the exemption to withhold Computer Analysis Response Team reports; database information and printouts; documents revealing the focus of specific FBI investigations; identity and/or locations of FBI or joint units, squads, and divisions; targets, dates, and scope of surveillance; tactical information contain in operational plans (except for historical staffing information for 1963 church bombing); undercover operations, collection and analysis of information, and operational directives.

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