FOIA News: Sunshine Week awards for feds

OIP Now Accepting Nominations for the 2026 Sunshine Week FOIA Awards

By DOJ/OIP, FOIA Post, Jan. 23, 2026

The Department of Justice, Office of Information Policy (OIP) is pleased to announce that nominations are open for the 2026 Sunshine Week FOIA Awards, recognizing the contributions of FOIA professionals from around the government. 

Agency FOIA professionals are at the center of ensuring successful FOIA administration and we look forward to celebrating the work of these individuals from around the government.  For this year’s event, OIP is seeking nominations for three categories of awards:

• Exceptional Service by a FOIA Professional or Team of FOIA Professionals

• Exceptional Advancements in IT to Improve the Agency’s FOIA Administration

• Lifetime Service Award

Nominations can be submitted by agencies or by a member of the public.  All nominations are due to OIP by Friday, February 13, 2026.

Read more here.

Court opinion issued Jan. 21, 2026

Am. Oversight v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s Rule 12(f) motion to strike twenty-two introductory paragraphs from the requester’s FOIA complaint, which the government argued comprised “entirely irrelevant alleged factual material and editorialized statements”; noting the government “concedes . . . such motions ‘are generally disfavored,’” and that the requester “contests” the supposed irrelevance of the content; concluding none of the paragraphs at issue are “scandalous or prejudicial” and “judicial efficiency is far better served by not required Plaintiff to amend.”

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: FDA FOIA: Two Law Firm Playbooks

How Lawyers Use FOIA for Radically Different Agendas

FOIAengine: A Tale of Two Law Firms

By Randy E. Miller, Law St. Media, Jan. 22, 2026

When most people think about the Freedom of Information Act, they imagine journalists prying loose hidden facts or activists holding officials accountable. But FOIA is also a workhorse tool for lawyers. As two law firms’ 2025 FOIA filings with the Food and Drug Administration show, the same statute can serve very different legal purposes.

In 2025, Siri & Glimstad and Hyman, Phelps & McNamara were the leading law firm submitters of FOIA requests to the FDA, according to PoliScio Analytics’ competitive-intelligence database FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows. The two firms accounted for 13 percent of the 1,098 requests to the FDA made by 368 law firms last year.

Read more here.

Court opinion issued Jan. 20, 2026

Marker v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ. (N.D. Cal.) -- ruling that the department conducted an adequate search for records concerning plaintiff’s federal student loans; rejecting plaintiff’s challenges to the search methodology, concluding that alternative search terms and additional databases would not have produced unique borrower-specific records; further holding that the department was not required to produce records of payments allegedly made to prior commercial servicers because those records were no longer in the department’s possession or control.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: You are my only one

Mngr., Disclosure Servs. & FOIA Officer, Dep’t of the Treasury, OCC, NB 6, Wash., D.C. (closes 2/2/26) (internal to agency).

Court opinion issued Jan. 15, 2026

Leopold v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- on remand from the D.C. Circuit, holding that DOJ properly relied on Exemption 8 to withhold a Monitor Report assessing HSBC’s anti–money laundering and sanctions compliance and met the foreseeable harm requirement because disclosure of any portion of the report would threaten the effectiveness of bank supervision; reasoning that although redactions could mitigate harms such as criminal exploitation, competitive injury, and chilled employee candor, those risks alone did not justify withholding the entire document; further explaining that DOJ showed—through sworn declarations from foreign regulators—that release of even a redacted report would undermine settled expectations of confidentiality and foreseeably chill future cooperation with U.S. monitors and regulators.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Jan. 14, 2026

Levin v. IRS (N.D. Ala.) -- finding that the IRS properly relied on Exemption 7(A) and 7(E) to withhold guidance and templates used by IRS examiners in Employee Retention Credit (ERC) examinations, even though the materials were not tied to a specific taxpayer or investigation.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Jan. 12, 2026

Landis v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons (D.D.C.) -- holding that Office of Personnel Management properly relied on Exemption 6 to withhold the names and duty stations of Bureau of Prisons employees nationwide for 2017 and 2018, reasoning that BOP employees have significant privacy and safety interests and that disclosure would not meaningfully shed light on BOP operations.

S. Envtl. Law Ctr. v. TVA (E.D. Tenn.) -- determining that: (1) Tennessee Valley Authority performed a reasonable search for agency’s communications with an energy company concerning a proposed gas pipeline, rejecting plaintiff’s challenges to o the search scope, methods, and alleged missing records; (2) TVA did not adequately justify its withholdings of confidential commercial information under Exemption 4 because its categorical explanations were overly broad and did not clearly link specific documents to specific exemption rationales; and (3) TVA was entitled to summary judgment with respect to its redaction of personal contact information under Exemption 6, which plaintiff did not oppose.

Mannon v. U.S. Dep't of Veteran Affairs (E.D. Mich.) -- ruling that plaintiff failed to state a valid FOIA claim because his complaint did not clearly identify what his FOIA request was seeking, referenced conflicting request numbers, and did not specify which records were allegedly improperly withheld; further ruling that amendment would be futile because plaintiff’s proposed new claim was based on alleged destruction of evidence, which does not provide a standalone legal claim.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: Stars and Stripes still there; DOD regulation no longer gallantly streaming

The Department of Defense is removing a 1994 regulation governing its Stars and Stripes newspaper operations after determining that the rule addresses only internal policies and procedures and is unnecessary for public regulation; those matters will instead continue to be governed by DoD Directive 5122.11, according to a Federal Register notice published on January 15, 2026 (and effective immediately). Although DoD proposed updating the rule in April 2024 and received 91 public comments—most, but not all, supportive of Stars and Stripes and largely focused on issues such as FOIA access, facility access, and the republication of materials—the Department decided that those concerns were more appropriately handled through internal directives rather than notice-and-comment rulemaking.

FOIA News: Hedge funds, FOIA, and the FDA

How Hedge Funds Use FOIA to Stay Ahead of the Market

FOIAengine: Warning Letters and Inspection Reports in the Spotlight

By John A. Jenkins, Law St. Media, Jan. 14, 2026

Freedom of Information Act requests filed with the Food and Drug Administration by hedge funds last month revealed big financial players closely eyeing warning letters, enforcement documents, and inspection reports for major drug manufacturers and biopharma companies.

At the forefront was a sweeping request from Greenwich, Conn.-based Deep Track Capital for all Form 483 inspection reports issued by the FDA over nearly three years to two companies – CG Oncology (NASDAQ: CGON), which develops immunotherapies for bladder cancer; and Biovire, a contract manufacturer specializing in the final step of packaging “novel drugs and medical devices” for patient use.

Deep Track, focused exclusively on the life sciences industry, has $5.2 billion in assets under management and invests in public and pre-IPO biotechnology companies.  Form 483 reports, which the hedge fund is seeking, describe plant-inspection observations made by the FDA. 

Read more here.