Watkins Law & Advocacy, PLLC v. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs (D.D.C.) — on remand from Watkins Law & Advocacy, PLLC v. Dep’t of Justice, 78 F.4th 436 (D.C. Cir. 2023), in a case involving access to records about a VA background check system intended to identify veterans and benefits beneficiaries as “barred from possessing firearms” due to deficient “mental capacity,” granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding, firstly, that the agency properly withheld most records under Exemption 5 and the attorney-client privilege, as they reflected, inter alia, “legal advice . . . regarding compliance with the Brady Act information sharing provisions” when reporting information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System; noting the agency complied with the D.C. Circuit’s instructions for remand vis-a-vis the specificity of its Vaughn index; rejecting use of attorney-client privilege for two documents, which after in camera review, were determined to lack any confidential information transmitted between an attorney and client; holding, further, that the agency’s invocation of the attorney work-produce privilege is “untimely” as it was only raised on remand and no “extraordinary circumstances” justified its assertion so late in the proceedings; finally, concluding the agency properly applied the deliberative-process privilege to all records not otherwise properly withheld under the attorney-client privilege; explaining these records related to agency deliberations regarding the interpretation and implementation of the Brady Act; intriguingly, omitting any discussion of the foreseeable-harm standard.
Achey v. Exec. Office of U.S. Att’ys (D.D.C.) — in a case brought by a pro se inmate-requester seeking access to records of his own case, granting summary judgment to the agency “in all respects expect insofar as it must produce [to the requester] an electronic copy” of one of the documents at issue because it was requested “in an electronic format” and “located” by the agency in an electronic format during a digital search; noting that “[a]ny downstream question of how the Bureau of Prisons may ‘decide[] to limit or prohibit access to the material’” sent to the requested by email “is a separate matter ‘not before this Court.’”
Pickering v. Cent. Intelligence Agency (W.D.N.Y.) — denying the agency’s motion for reconsideration of an order for in camera review in a case involving the CIA’s invocation of Glomar, in connection with Exemption 1, refusing to acknowledge or deny the existence of an FBI Form FD-302; nevertheless modifying somewhat the procedures for in camera submission to avoid defeating the purpose of the Glomar doctrine.
Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.