Nat’l Ass’n of Criminal Def. Lawyers v. BOP (D.D.C.) -- in case involving records about prosecutors’ access to emails of inmates, finding that: (1) most of the government’s searches were adequately described and reasonably performed, but the search in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania lacked essential information about the search methodology and Michigan’s declaration conflicted with the Vaughn index; (2) the government’s Exemption 4 claim failed because the government did not clearly show that a vendor’s records concerning the BOP’s messaging system were both customarily and actually treated as confidential; (3) the government properly relied on the deliberative process privilege for many of its claimed withholdings, but a few records were not clearly liked to a specific decision-making process; (4) the government could not rely on the attorney work-product privilege to withhold records that discussed only policy or administrative matters without a reasonable anticipation of litigation; and (5) BOP properly redacted its Special Investigative Supervisors Manual under Exemptions 7(E) and 7(F), finding that disclosure could reveal law enforcement techniques or could jeopardize inmate and staff safety.
Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- holding that the FBI properly relied on Exemptions 1 and 3 in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of requested records “discussing the use of authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act . . . to investigate attendees of President Trump’s Save America Rally and multiple Black Lives Matter events in Washington, D.C. in 2021”; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that FBI waived its Glomar response via public disclosures.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.