Court opinion issued Apr. 3, 2026

American Oversight v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning access to “internal-training documents given to the DOJ personnel who reviewed and redacted the Epstein files,” denying the requester’s motion for a preliminary injunction ordering complete production before former Attorney General Bondi’s anticipated April 14, 2026 deposition before the House Oversight Committee; agreeing with the agency as to proper interpretation of the first factor of the relevant legal standard, namely, that the requester, “at a minimum, demonstrate its entitlement to expedited processing,” as set out in the FOIA statute; rejecting the requester’s alternative proposal that it only show entitlement to the records, as under this approach “a production injunction would be easier to obtain than an injunction for expedited processing,” which “make[s] little sense”; noting, further, that “no court in this district has ever granted a production preliminary injunction without first finding expedited processing warranted or noting that the Government had already agreed to expedite processing,” and neither has happened here; finally, with respect to irreparable harm, concluding that, while the “requested documents would be highly probative for . . . Bondi’s April 14 deposition,” “[t]here is no reason to think that the information Plaintiff seeks would become stale or irrelevant if produced” at a later date.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Mar. 31, 2026

Tobias v. Dep’t of the Interior (D.D.C.) — granting plaintiff's fee petition where agency produced no documents on any of nine requests prior to suit; finding eligibility under catalyst theory based on sudden post-filing acceleration after months of inaction and missed self-imposed deadlines; holding all four entitlement factors favored plaintiff because requests served public interest, plaintiff had non-commercial journalistic motivations, and agency lacked colorable basis for delay; awarding full lodestar with only narrow reductions for clerical tasks and certain post-resolution billing; permitting recovery for unsuccessful fee settlement negotiations given government's “ill-advised” litigation posture; and allowing full fees-on-fees recovery, including over $21,000 for reply briefing alone, where the inflated fees-on-fees costs were attributable to defendants' 45-page opposition raising mostly meritless arguments that caused the fee dispute “to spiral into a second major litigation.”

Louise Trauma Ctr. LLC v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — denying fee petition in its entirety based on counsel's troubling track record of billing deficiencies across multiple recent cases in same district; an apparently inflated fee request where counsel valued fees at $50,000 in settlement discussions but sought more than twice that amount less than two weeks later; and pervasive deficiencies in the billing records themselves, including entries shifted to different dates, time increased on amended records, and a billing entry described only as "reasonable number of hours," leaving the court with "little confidence as to the reliability of counsel's billing records or the overall reasonableness of counsel's claimed fees."

Am. Soc’y for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v. Dep’t of Agric. (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the government’s motion to dismiss in a case “asserting 42 individual” FOIA claims about the processing separate and discreet requests, as well as “one policy or practice claim”; concluding the requester “plausibly alleged a policy or practice claim” as to “two alleged deficiencies,” namely, the agency’s “failure to timely respond to Plaintiff’s appeals” and “to make prompt determinations and disclosures of responsive records”; agreeing with the government that the requester’s claim fails under Rule 12(b)(6) insofar as it alleges the agency “regularly and repeatedly” fails to provide estimated dates of completion or provide appeal rights in its determination letters; rejecting the government’s proposal to dismiss or sever the first 42 counts, as “they form the basis of the policy or practice claim.”

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention (D.D.C.) — denying government’s motion to dismiss FOIA policy-or-practice claim arising from closure of CDC's FOIA office and rerouting of all requests to a different HHS division under DOGE workforce reduction order; finding plaintiff stated a claim based on plausible allegations of widespread processing delays, failure to maintain reading-room disclosures, and stonewalling of requesters across multiple organizations; denying without prejudice both parties' cross-motions for summary judgment on the FOIA claim because the record was mixed, stale, and incomplete, and agency’s conduct had not yet been shown to be "so delinquent or recalcitrant" as to warrant injunctive relief beyond an ordinary production order; expressing skepticism of government’s exceptional-circumstances defense given that the delays were self-inflicted, which "calls to mind the man sentenced to death for killing his parents, who pleads for mercy on the ground that he is an orphan"; and dismissing APA claim because FOIA provided an adequate alternative remedy.

White v. Dep’t of Agric. (E.D. Okla.) — following a bench trial, entering judgment for the agency; holding that the agency conducted an adequate search for records, even though “no search terms were utilized to identify the responsive documents,” give the “nature of Plaintiff’s request, the USDA’s record-keeping practices, and the type of information stored on the [Multi-Family Information System] and [Automatic Multi-Family Accounting System]” databases; concluding, further, that the requester was not entitled to attorney’s fees.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Mar. 30, 2026

Leopold v. Cent. Intelligence Agency (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning records of how CIA investigates personnel misconduct, concluding that the agency was largely justified in withholding records pursuant to Exemptions 1, 3, 6, 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E); of note, finding that a statutory amendment to the CIA Act was applicable retroactively and allowed the agency to broadly protect its internal operations; further, declining to adopt the Eighth Circuit’s heightened standard, which would have required showing an “actual expectation of harm” from the disclosure of records protected under Exemption 7(E), but noting that the agency met that stricter test regardless.

Long v. Immigration & Customs Enf’t (D.D.C.) — denying the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment regarding the adequacy of the agency’s search; rejecting the requester’s argument that the agency was obliged to extract the requested information from underlying Enforcement Integrated Database and Integrated Decision Support Database dictionaries, rather than a separate “online data dictionary repository know[] as Matrix,” which consists of content uploaded from the underlying databases’ source code; noting that the agency’s declarant establishes that “Matrix is ‘the current authoritative place for technical documents, such as data dictionaries,’” and the agency “cannot simply query the databases themselves for the data dictionaries as . . . requested,” even if this results in an “imperfect” search; accepting the requester’s other objections about the “omission” of certain specific subsets of information, such as "an “‘ENFORCE’ table subset” and “plain-English translations of codes”; further concluding that the agency failed to “explain its withholding of technical database information” based on exemptions invoked in concurrent litigation.

Informed Consent Action Network v. Health Res. & Servs. Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that, in a case involving a request for the names of “every employee” of a certain office within the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency properly released “the names of the Director and Deputy Director” while withholding “the names of the 35 employees that worked underneath them” under Exemption 6; noting that “employees in the office have received harassing and threatening emails, voicemails, and text messages,” and therefore have substantial privacy interests at stake, and the requester has not shown that the “public’s interest in knowing the names” of lower level employees would do anything but add “minimal incremental value” to understanding of how the agency “is adjudicating claims for COVID-19 related injuries” or otherwise “spending taxpayer money”; similarly questioning the strength of the asserted public interest in knowing whether the employees’ identities would implicate their qualifications or potential conflicts of interest.

Kleinert v. Bureau of Land Mgmt. (D.D.C.) — denying the requester’s motion for attorney’s fees and costs; concluding the requester was not “eligible” since “[t]he record reflects that the disclosure of the . . . [r]ecords” at issue “resulted from ‘delayed administrative processing,’ not a chance in position prompted by Plaintiff’s lawsuit”; noting also that “[w]hile the agency’s two-year delay in releasing” documents “was undoubtedly the product of repeated mistakes, the record nonetheless shows a good-faith effort to respond.”

Ctr. for Immigration Studies v. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Servs. (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and granting in part the requester’s cross-motion; holding, in relevant part, that the requester reasonably described the records sought, and the agency’s failure to undertake a search was improper, but reserving judgment on the agency’s claim that the actual search for and processing of potentially responsive records would either be unreasonably burdensome or require the creation or new records; rejecting the agency’s argument that a request for “‘all records sufficient show any and or all the . . . information’ responsive to four distinct inquiries relating to supporters of CHNV parole applicants” is “analogous to [a request] seeking ‘any and all documents and records’ that ‘relate’ to a given subject”; holding further that, insofar as the agency wished to defend any “no responsive records” determination on a subpart of the request at issue, its briefing and declaration were factually “insufficient”; finally, noting the declaration is also insufficient, in part, because it does not explain why certain component offices were “the ones most likely to contain responsive records,” or whether any other offices were locations “where record were reasonably likely to be found.”

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — ruling that plaintiff’s challenge to DOJ’s categorical withholding of records about former Congressman Matt Gaetz on privacy grounds was moot because DOJ began processing and producing records after briefing commenced; further ruling, in most relevant part, that plaintiff failed to show that DOJ maintained a broad, unlawful policy of issuing Glomar responses to requests about third-party investigations, but noting potentially erroneous practices of the Criminal Division and FBI that could support narrower policy-or-practice claims and denying both parties’ summary judgment motions on this count.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Mar. 27, 2026

Evans Law PLLC v. DOJ (D. Colo.) -- finding that: (1) DOJ’s search for records about Hunter Biden and James Biden’s foreign contacts adequate, noting it reasonably covered the relevant offices and records as of the search date and wasn’t required to seek documents created later in the Office of Special Counsel; (2) DOJ properly withheld portions of emails and an internal memorandum under Exemption 3 in conjunction with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), the Bank Secrecy Act, the National Security Act, and the Internal Revenue Code; (3) DOJ properly relied on Exemption 5’s attorney work-product privilege to withhold emails and the memo, but charts were not covered because they were prepared for presidential transition purposes, not in anticipation of litigation; and (4) DOJ properly relied on Exemptions 7(A), 7(C), and 7(E) to withhold records and its withholdings met the foreseeable harm standard “absent any argument to the the contrary” from plaintiffs.

Protect the Pub.’s Trust v. NLRB (D.D.C.) -- on renewed summary judgment and following in camera review, ruling that NLRB properly withheld portions of an ethics memo under Exemption 5’s attorney work-product privilege, as those sections were drafted in anticipation of litigation concerning the Board’s Joint Employer Rule.

Chelmowski v. EPA (D.D.C.) -- concluding that EPA’s searches for plaintiff’s two “FOIA-on-FOIA” requests were only partially adequate, because they focused on individual employees’ email accounts without fully explaining why other records or repositories were not searched; further, EPA properly withheld records pursuant to Exemption 5 (deliberative process and attorney-client privileges) and Exemption 6, and the court did not require a separate finding of foreseeable harm.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Mar. 25 & 26, 2026

Mar. 25, 2026

Informed Consent Action Network v. Nat’l Cancer Inst. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning records of the National Cancer Institute’s involvement with the publication and later retraction of a medial journal article, granting in part the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding, first, that the agency’s search for responsive records was reasonable; noting, “that [given] Informed Consent was seeking email communications to and from a particular individual, it is hard to imagine what else the agency could do outside of search that individual’s inbox for the relevant emails,” which was done; further holding that the agency had not yet adequately justified its use of Exemption 4 because it failed to explain the basis for its declarant’s personal knowledge of the relevant medical journal’s privacy practices and, thus, had not established why the records at issue were “confidential”; permitting the agency an opportunity to “file additional evidence” before another round of briefing.

WP Co., LLC v. Nat’l Highway Traffic Safety Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s motion for summary judgment in a case concerning access to records “related to the safety of motor vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems”; holding that NHTSA properly invoked Exemption 4 to withhold “Tesla’s version and narrative information” as found in accident report data, but improperly redacted “information reported by other manufacturers” and “Tesla’s [operational design domain] information”; noting various “confidential treatment requests” from manufacturers, as well as NHTSA’s “subsequent determinations” to treat certain information as confidential, may be “indicative of the entities’ actual and customary treatment, but they are not, without more, sufficient grounds to conclude that the agency met its burden under FOIA”; noting also that, for the “confidential” analysis, what matters is “how the particular party customarily treats the information, not . . . the industry as a whole”; concluding, however, that Tesla’s “own submission fills the factual gaps in the agency’s declaration,” at least for some categories of Tesla-submitted data; rejecting the requester’s argument that Tesla drivers’ access to “individual data points” through their “phone applications or via their car’s touch screen” is sufficient to vitiate the confidentiality of that same information when submitted to the government at an aggregate level; agreeing with “other courts in this district that the government’s assurances of confidentiality are, at a minimum, ‘relevant to the confidentiality analysis,’” and here the agency’s “practice of ‘routinely’ granting Tesla’s requests [for confidential treatment], with few exceptions, established reasonable and actual reliance interests on Tesla’s part”; agreeing also with various courts that the foreseeable-harm standard requires showing how disclosure would “pose ‘genuine harm to the submitter’s economic or business interests . . . thereby dissuading others from submitting similar information to the government’”; holding that, at least with Tesla’s operational design domain information, there remained “a genuine dispute of material fact . . . over whether disclosure . . . would result in reasonably foreseeable harm”; with respect to Exemption 6, as applied to information pertaining to the “specific location of . . . reported crashes, including the latitude, longitude, address, and zip code of the accidents,” concluding the “private interests at stake here appear, at most, barely greater than de minimis because the requested spreadsheet data is not, in and of itself identifying,” and “the public interest that the Post has identified is not insignificant”; ultimately concluding, however, that further information about “the privacy interests at stake” was needed to “properly weigh those interests against the public’s”; finally, holding the agency met its burden vis-a-vis segregability.

Schiff v. Internal Revenue Serv. (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; concluding the IRS conducted an adequate search for records responsive to plaintiff’s first FOIA request, which concerned a press conference hosted by the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement; laying out how the agency employed its eDiscovery team for an electronic search, as well as directing officials to conduct manual record searches; deciding the agency failed to justify its use of Exemptions 5 (in conjunction with the deliberative-process privilege), 7(A), and 7(E); noting the IRS’s briefing speaks only in “broad strikes” and without any “detail,” and fails altogether to address segregability and foreseeable harm; noting further, with Exemption 7, that the IRS failed even to “specify what investigation or enforcement proceeding disclosure would disrupt” or “what [law enforcement] technique or procedure is ‘at stake’”; with respect to the second FOIA request at issue, holding that plaintiff reasonably described most of the records sought, even if the resulting volume of potentially responsive records might be voluminous, but did fall short of the reasonable-description requirement for one portion of the request seeking any “materials that ‘mention’ the ‘tax authority, or authorities’ of the United States and four other countries.”

Mar. 26, 2026

Office of the Fed. Pub. Defender v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s motion for reconsideration of a summary-judgment order rejecting DOJ’s use of Exemption 7(E), despite the agency’s continued failure “to meaningfully engage with the text of the exemption and basic line-drawing questions that result from [its] position”; clarifying the previous order does not apply to Exemption “7(E) materials that Plaintiff . . . was not challenging”; further amending the summary-judgment order to hold that the government had established certain categories of information concerning, inter alia, BOP “deputy information,” “means of communications” during inmate “transport,” and other deputy assignment details, reflected law enforcement techniques and procedures given their “nature” or tendency to “reveal generalized procedures” that are part of a broader “Operational Plan”; concluding, moreover, that the government demonstrated “logically how release of the requested information might create a risk of circumvention of the law.”

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Mar. 24, 2026

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.’”

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case involving records about DOJ’s efforts to “obtain and centralize voter information from state election officials,” and subsequent to a prior order entering a preliminary injunction for expedited processing, ordering the agency to “accelerate its processing of [potentially responsive] records” to “1,000 pages per week,” with status reports to be filed “every two weeks” addressing interim productions; noting “the modest processing rate that DOJ has proposed—250 pages per month—stands in contrast to the remarkable speed and scope of its underlying initiative to collect and process voter data from state election officials” and is “not commensurate with the ‘importance and urgency’ of CREW’s FOIA requests.”

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.

Court opinions issued Mar. 23, 2026

Jigsaw Productions, Inc. v. U.S. Secs. & Exch. Comm’n (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning access to a recording of Elon Musk’s interview with SEC civil investigators, denying the agency’s motion for summary judgment and ordering release in part; rejecting the agency’s invocation of Exemptions 6 and 7(C) for lack of any substantial privacy interest, “much less any foreseeable harm to Musk’s privacy interests that would flow from disclosure”; noting the “contents of the interview have already been publicly released” in transcript form, the SEC has publicized its civil enforcement efforts, and “Musk has publicly discussed the SEC matter on national television.”

Informed Consent Action Network v. Food & Drug Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the government’s motion for an Open America stay; noting, as many recent stay orders, that the FDA has been compelled by a judge in the Northern District of Texas “to produce approximately 9.1 million pages of COVID-19 vaccine records within a highly compressed timeframe,” and this “unprecedently demanding production schedule . . . far exceeds a ‘predictable’ agency workload and thus constitutes ‘exceptional circumstances’ within the meaning of FOIA”; concluding the agency has also “exercised due diligence in respond to the FOIA requests it receives, including the one at issue in this case.”

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Mar. 19 & 20, 2026

Mar. 19, 2026

JG Law, PLLC v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; ruling, in relevant part, that Exemptions 3 and 7(E) apply to the records at issue; holding that Exemption 7(E) covers law-enforcement database codes found in certain immigration records; holding further that Exemption 3, in conjunction with Section 222(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, protect records reflecting the State Department’s adjudication of U.S. visa applications; rejecting the requester’s argument that the agencies’ Vaughn index either lacked sufficient detail or failed to provide information concerning segregability.

Mid.-Atl. Innocence Project v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment in a case involving claims under the FOIA and Privacy Act; in relevant part, rejecting the agency’s invocation of Exemption 3, in conjunction with the Child Victims’ and Child Witnesses’ Rights Act, as the underlying withholding statute’s reference to “criminal proceedings” is best read to refer only to proceedings in federal court, rather than the state-court matters implicated by the records at issue; rejecting also the agency’s use of Exemption 7(C) to redact the identities of testifying witnesses, other government witnesses, and a prosecutor, as those names were disclosed in open court during trial and are already discoverable through review of the relevant court transcripts; of note, with respect to Exemption 7(C) and the foreseeable-harm standard, rejecting the agency’s analysis for failing to account for the age of the records and the “highly speculative” nature of potential reputational risks to these third parties if the records were disclosed; concluding, however, that the agency properly invoked Exemption 7(D), and rejecting the requester’s “official acknowledgement” argument; finally, rejecting both parties’ argument with respect to the use of Exemption 7(F)

Am. Civil Liberties Union of Mich. v. U.S. Immigration & Customs Enf’t (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion to dismiss in an Administrative Procedure Act case challenging a final rule prohibiting state and local government entities from disclosing records related to ICE detainees on grounds that such records are under the federal government’s legal control; rejecting the government’s argument that the FOIA provides an adequate alternative remedy in lieu of the APA; noting that when plaintiff has tried to request records covered by the regulatory disclosure restriction from the federal government, the agency lacked any mechanism for obtaining records obtained by state and local entities, such as county jails.

Mar. 20, 2026

Dhakal v. Fed. Bureau of Investigation (D.D.C.) — in a case brought by a pro se requester seeking access to records about himself, granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; concluding the agency conducted an adequate search, properly applied Exemptions 5, 6, 7(C), and 7(E), and justified its various Glomar responses (citing Exemptions 1, 3, 7(D), 7(E), and 7(F)); addressing also the agency’s use of exemptions under the Privacy Act; finally, agreeing with the agency that it undertook reasonable efforts to segregate out non-exempt information from the records at issue.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Mar. 16 & 18, 2026

Mar. 16, 2026

Heritage Found. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning, in relevant part, “300,382 potentially responsive pages” of records, denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and granting in part the requester’s cross-motion; rejecting the agency’s argument that it not process the potentially responsive material because the request at issue was “unreasonably described”; explaining “the request was clear enough for the Department to locate responsive documents from some of its offices without issue”; rejecting also the agency’s claim that processing would be unduly burdensome, and noting the fact “a FOIA request implicates a large quantity of documents is insufficient, on its own, to establish that [processing] is unduly burdensome”; concluding the government failed to offer any “good reason why further search term filtering and removal of false positives cannot significantly reduce the burden of the search”; noting with approval the requester’s argument that the agency failed “to reasonably refine its searches,” such as by using “connector search terms,” or making use of “an eDiscovery tool”; ordering the agency to review a sample of the pages at issue, propose exclusionary search terms, negotiate with the requester, and run another search.

Mar. 18, 2026

Judicial Watch v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a consolidated case involving requests from Judicial Watch, the Heritage Foundation, and various press outlets for access to audio recordings of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, denying Heritage’s motion to strike a government declaration and for leave to engage in discovery vis-a-vis the parties’ dispute over plaintiffs’ eligibility for attorney’s fees; with respect to the motion to strike the government declaration filed in opposition to a fee motion, concluding Heritage’s motion “is procedurally improper” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) and, in any case, unsupported by “sufficient basis”; rejecting also Heritage’s motion for discovery; noting how “neither party is aware of any case granting discovery in a FOIA fee dispute”; explaining moreover that Heritage failed to demonstrate bad faith, either in arguing that the declarant lacked requisite personal knowledge and relied on hearsay, or by challenging the veracity of specific factual claims; noting, in closing, that Heritage’s “specific requests for discovery are deficient.”

Judicial Watch v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in the same case as above, setting out a magistrate’s recommendation that the district court deny the parties’ motions for attorney’s fees under the “catalyst theory”; on the question of eligibility, concluding the Heritage Foundation “established only that it substantially caused the release of the second recording of the Biden-Hur Interview, but not the first recording,” and that CNN and other press requesters had “not established eligibility on any basis . . . put forward”; explaining the release of the second recording appeared to be prompted by a request from counsel for the Heritage Foundation, as memorialized in one of the parties’ past joint status reports, and rejecting DOJ’s argument that such release was merely “de minimis”; further recommending that Heritage was not entitled to a fee reward despite the “significant public interest in the release of the records,” and Heritage’s status as a non-profit requester involved with the dissemination of information, because the government’s initial decision to withhold the recordings under executive privilege, as asserted by the Biden White House, was not unreasonable; stating that even if Heritage were entitled to fees, its fee award should be “zero” because it “enjoyed meager success” and did not substantiate its work or costs on the specific efforts that led to release of the second recording.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Mar. 12, 2026

Ananiades v. U.S. Dep't of Air Force (9h Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that the Air Force adequately searched for records that plaintiff provided to it as a contractor in 1984, noting that the relevant contract files were destroyed in 2004.

Zakarneh v. USCIS (D. Or.) -- granting summary judgment to government after determining that: (1) plaintiff’s claims for audio and video recordings of his own 2016 and 2018 immigration interviews were moot since they had already been produced; and (2) plaintiff’s remaining claims for his immigration records were barred for failure to exhaust administrative remedies because he failed to file timely agency appeals.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.