Court opinions
2026
Dates of decisions below. Please contact us if any of the links are broken. For additional sources of FOIA case law, see "Federal court cases" in Useful Links.
Jan. 22, 2026
Checksfield v. IRS (2nd Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that the IRS properly relied on Exemption 3, in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103, to withhold in full third-party tax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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Jan. 9, 2026
Am. First Legal Found. v. U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion to dismiss, and concluding that the U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) is not subject to FOIA” because it is a legislative-branch agency; explaining that the APA’s exclusion of “the Congress,” which is incorporated into the FOIA’s definition of “agency” at sec. 552(f), is best read as the “entire legislative branch,” including its agencies; rejecting the requester’s arguments that GAO is, in fact, an “establishment in the executive branch” or an “independent regulatory agency.”
Williams & Connolly LLP v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D.D.C.) — issuing an amended version of the Court’s Oct. 31, 2025 opinion, which concluded that ICE conducted an adequate search for records related to individuals involved in a sanctions evasion case in the Southern District of New York, and that CBP and USCIS properly withheld records pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(C) and met the statute’s foreseeable harm and segregability requirements; explaining in an accompanying order that the amendment was necessary to clarify how resolution of the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment was not “final” and “appealable” because plaintiffs claims against the Department of the Treasury and Department of State “have not yet been adjudicated.”
Kitlinski v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — holding that DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility failed to conduct an adequate search because it did not attempt to identify “journaled emails,” or other archived messages that might have been deleted by the relevant custodian, through its Microsoft M365 document system.
Jan. 6, 2026
Legal Eagle, LLC v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- ruling that plaintiff failed to exhaust its administrative remedies because it neither appealed OIP’s determination that its FOIA request was not reasonably described nor resubmitted a narrowed request; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that no administrative appeal was required, explaining that OIP affirmatively offered both an appeal and an opportunity to reformulate the request, which plaintiff declined; further, dismissing plaintiff’s expedited-processing claim as moot, since OIP had already issued a final response to the FOIA request and there was nothing left to expedite.