Below is a summary of the notable FOIA court decisions and news from last month, as well as a look ahead to FOIA events in August.
Court decisions
We posted and summarized 35 opinions for July, the second highest monthly total of the year. Two decisions from opposite sides of the country are worth revisiting. From the West Coast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court’s decision that Exemption 4 does not protect "EEO-1” reports describing the workforce composition of federal contractors. See Ctr. for Investigative Reporting v. DOL (9th Cir. July 30, 2025). However, the Circuit expressly rejected the district court’s test for determining the “commercial” nature of those reports, which consisted of evaluating whether the reports had “commercial value” and would cause competitive harm if disclosed. Rather, the Circuit held that the “plain meaning” of the term “commercial” in Exemption 4 required information to be “made to be bought and sold or . . . describes an exchange of goods or services for profit,” and that the EEO-1 reports failed to meet that standard.
The second noteworthy opinion issued in July emanates from the humid Mid-Atlantic, namely Gun Owners of Am., Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (D.D.C. July 23, 2025), in which the court permanently barred plaintiff from using certain exempt information that ATF had inadvertently released during its FOIA litigation production. Although plaintiff did not dispute the agency’s withholdings or its diligence in attempting to claw back the mistakenly released records, plaintiff opposed the government’s proposed relief on principle, arguing that it was precluded by the D.C. Circuit’s recent opinion in Human Rights Defense Center v. U.S. Park Police (D.C. Cir. Jan. 24, 2025 (vacating district court’s clawback order after determining that “neither FOIA nor any inherent judicial authority” allows an agency to seek a court order to limit the effects of an erroneous Exemption 6 disclosure). The district court notably ruled that HRDC was inapplicable to the case at hand based on differing facts, and that the U.S. Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit precedents authorized the court to exercise “equitable authority” to bar plaintiff’s use of information protected under Exemption 3 and 7(E). Further, the court held that its relief did not violate plaintiff’s First Amendment rights, an issue the D.C. Circuit declined to adjudicate in the HRDC case.
Top news
On July 9, 2025, DOJ’s Office of Information Policy issued guidance on the disclosure-related impact of President Trump’s Executive Order No. 1303, “Restoring Gold Standard Science.”
The Office of Government Information Services held its annual open meeting on July 23rd.
August events
Aug. 12-14: Graduate School USA training, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts.