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 June.
Court opinions
We identified and summarized 15 opinions in May. Of note, in Mora v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C. May 18), the court granted summary judgment to CBP in a case brought by immigration attorneys alleging that the agency maintained an unlawful policy or practice of ignoring FOIA deadlines. The court found that CBP's backlog resulted from "exceptional circumstances" rather than deliberate noncompliance, and declined to follow two Northern District of California decisions that had applied the Ninth Circuit's different policy-or-practice standard.
Also of interest was Alper v. DOJ (D.D.C. May 14), in which the court ruled that the public interest in corroborating a death-row inmate's innocence claim outweighed the privacy interests of FBI agents, private individuals, and hotel guests whose statements supported that claim, ordering disclosure of all three categories of records.
Top news
On May 7th, DOJ/OIP announced that all agencies had finalized their FY 2025 Annual FOIA reports. Government-wide, agencies received 1,707,197 requests — a 13.7% increase over FY 2024 — and processed a record-high 1,635,055 requests. The backlog, however, grew 28.2% to 339,671 requests, while total FOIA staffing fell 14.3% to 4,823 full-time employees.
Also on May 7th, a federal jury convicted Sohaib Akhter of Alexandria, Virginia, on charges of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, password trafficking, and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. Akhter and his twin brother worked for a company that provided software and services to more than 45 federal agencies, including case management and FOIA database software. The brothers sought to harm their employer and its government customers by accessing computers without authorization and deleting approximately 96 FOIA and other government databases.
Former President Biden sued the Justice Department on May 27th to block release of audio recordings and transcripts from his 2017 interviews with his memoir ghostwriter, which the Heritage Foundation had sought under FOIA. Biden's filing argued that the DOJ was abandoning "core tenets of American justice" by disclosing his "private information." The dispute connects to FOIA litigation the Heritage Foundation filed in 2024 seeking materials from Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents.
June events
June 1: Deadline for nominations for 2026-2028 FOIA Advisory Committee
June 3: DOJ/OIP, Exemption 1 and Exemption 7 Training
June 11: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting.
June 17: DOJ/OIP, Exemption 4 and Exemption 5 Training