Checksfield v. IRS (2nd Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that the IRS properly relied on Exemption 3, in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103, to withhold in full third-party tax returns or return information; rejecting requester’s argument that any exceptions to non-disclosure applied.
Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.
EPA will rescind its environmental justice–based expedited FOIA processing provision, as set forth in a proposed rule published today in the Federal Register. The proposal notes that expedited processing based on “compelling need” would remain available and that environmental justice–related requests would continue to be eligible for fee waivers.
Public comments will be accepted until February 26, 2026.
Agencies are required to post their Fiscal Year 2025 Annual FOIA Report on their websites no later than March 1, 2026. Here are a few agencies that have gotten off to an early start. As in previous years, we will provide additional updates and summarize the reports issued by the more active FOIA agencies.
Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (received 140 requests; processed 13 requests)
A new Freedom of Information Act newsletter, FOIA Findings, was launched in January to focus on how FOIA and open records laws can be used to illuminate tax policy and tax administration.
The newsletter is led by journalist Lauren Locricchio, who will oversee reporting and analysis rooted in documents obtained through FOIA and related disclosure laws. Each edition is designed to surface what agency records actually show—cutting through press releases and policy statements to highlight the evidence behind the decisions.
FOIA Findings is published by Tax Notes, a leading source of tax news and analysis founded in 1970. For more than five decades, Tax Notes has provided in-depth reporting and analysis for tax professionals, policymakers, academics, and journalists
Readers can subscribe to FOIA Findings on LinkedIn or through the Tax Notes website. You can find the newsletter here.
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.
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.
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.
Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; agreeing with the Second Circuit’s decision in Everytown for Gun Safety v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, 984 F.3d 30 (2d Cir. 2020), that notwithstanding the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009’s requirement that any statute used with Exemption 3 expressly reference the FOIA, Congress’s 2012 version of the so-called “Tiahrt Rider” is a qualifying withholding statute, despite lacking any such “specific citation to section 552(b)(3)”; rejecting, as an aside, the requester’s suggestion that the Rider, while “preclud[ing] the use of appropriated funds for purposes of responding to a FOIA request for firearms trace data,” “does not bar . . . release . . . if someone else foots the bill”; agreeing with the agency’s interpretation of the breadth of the Rider, which “is best read to immunize . . . all firearms trade data, not only data disclosed to governmental entities for law enforcement, national security, or intelligence purposes”; holding further that the Rider leaves no discretion to the agency to disclose firearms trace data; explaining all records sought in Baltimore’s request fell within the Rider’s prohibition on disclosure; of note, failing to mention the relevance of the government’s disclosure of information protected by the Rider in the pending “clawback”-order appeal, Gun Owners of America, No. 25-5309 (D.C. Cir. filed Aug. 25, 2025), despite having ordered supplemental briefing from the government on that point.
Marker v. Dep’t of Educ. (N.D. Cal.) — ruling 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.
Mngr., Disclosure Servs. & FOIA Officer, Dep’t of the Treasury, OCC, NB 6, Wash., D.C. (closes 2/2/26) (internal to agency).
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.