Campaign for Accountability v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming in part and reversing in part the district court’s decision and holding that Office of Legal Counsel’s (OLC) opinions are not subject to FOIA’s “reading-room” disclosure requirements because they are not “final opinions made in the adjudication of cases” nor “statements of policy or interpretations adopted by the agency; vacating the district court’s order requiring disclosure of OLC opinions resolving interagency disputes, reasoning that OLC opinions offer prospective legal advice, not binding orders or adjudications, and therefore do not resolve “cases” or have determinate consequences; noting that although OLC’s opinions are considered authoritative within the Executive Branch, they are not automatically adopted as the “working law” of client agencies unless an agency actually implements them as its own; in a concurring opinion, Judge Rao emphasized that appellant lacked standing because its claims were a generalized grievance without a particularized injury or concrete harm.
Husch Blackwell LLP v. Dep’t of Commerce (D.D.C.) -- in a case concerning records on how and why the Bureau of Industry and Security added certain companies to the “Entity List,” which restricts exports to foreign entities for national security reasons, ruling that: (1) BIS had not justified its withholding under Exemption 1, because its declarations merely repeated classification language without explaining how disclosure would harm national security; and (2) although the Export Control Reform Act qualifies as an Exemption 3 statute, BIS failed to show that withheld memoranda fit within the Ac’s enumerated or closely related categories.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.