FOIA Results Wanted Before Ruling In DOGE Disclosure Suit
By Jared Foretek, Law360, Aug. 26, 2025
A D.C. federal judge said he wants to see how the Trump administration responds to Freedom of Information Act requests submitted in February before deciding on the government's motion to dismiss an environmental group's suit claiming that DOGE teams working in federal agencies have violated transparency laws.
At a status conference Tuesday morning, an attorney for the federal government said some of the agencies that received FOIA requests regarding the activities of the advisory organization known as the Department of Government Efficiency should be formally responding next month. But, he said, the court shouldn't need to wait for the agencies to reply to review its dismissal motion, arguing that the Center for Biological Diversity, the plaintiff, had brought a deficient complaint in the hopes of strengthening it with FOIA responses and discovery later.
"The proper process here is not to file a deficient complaint and then … seek discovery to fill deficiencies in the complaint," Samuel Holt, the U.S. Department of Justice attorney, said Tuesday.
But U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss said that it would save the court time if he took on any FOIA disputes before assessing the government's grounds for dismissal. If a dismissal ruling came first, he said, the court might grant it, only to have the plaintiffs bring an amended complaint using what they got from the FOIA requests.
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