Court opinions issued Feb. 17, 2026

Lenz v. IRS (D.C. Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that plaintiff failed to demonstrate that IRS attorneys knowingly misrepresented the status of two boxes of responsive documents sought in a 2008 FOIA lawsuit involving the same parties; finding that plaintiff’s motion for relief under Rule 60(b)(3) was untimely filed and that the district court properly declined to set aside the judgment under its inherent authority due to lack of clear and convincing evidence of fraud.

Biggins v. USPS (D.N.J.) -- granting agency’s motion to dismiss pro se plaintiff’s amended Complain, which sought change-of-address information of a third party upon whom plaintiff wanted to serve legal process; finding that plaintiff failed to submit proper FOIA requests and had not exhausted administrative remedies.

Ezeah v. EOUSA (D.D.C.) -- denying plaintiff's motion for reconsideration and granting summary judgment to the government after the agency clarified that the only records requested by plaintiff—communications related to his prosecution between the federal prosecutor and his defense attorney, and between the prosecutor and an FBI agent—had been permanently deleted under the agency’s retention policy.

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

Court opinion issued Feb. 12, 2026

Informed Consent Action Network v. Food & Drug Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting in part the agency’s motion for an Open America stay of proceedings; concluding that the agency adequately demonstrated “exceptional circumstances,” in large part due to “aggressive production rates” imposed by a “Texas court” that require the agency to disclose “up to 180,000 pages each month”; rejecting various arguments raised by the requester, which were unsuccessfully raised before other judges in the DDC in the recent past, including last week; noting, moreover, that the agency has “acted diligently” in processing the requests at issue, despite its limited resources and staffing.

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 Feb. 9 & 10, 2026

Feb. 10, 2026

Foster v. Drug Enf’t Admin. (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion for summary judgment, rejecting its use of Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(E), and, after conducting in camera review, ordering disclosure of “security-camera footage from over fifteen years ago that depicts the parking lot of a pain clinic”; concluding, as an initial matter, that the video footage met the Exemption 7 threshold as it was “obtained and used by the FBI in connection with its criminal investigation into the illegal distribution of prescription drugs”; yet also concluding there was no privacy interest at stake because the footage was “of low resolution”—“[n]o faces are discernible . . . no license plates are visible, and no individual can reasonably be identified”; with regard to Exemption 7(E), concluding the “video was [not] captured by [the agency’s] surveillance devices,” and therefore could shed no light on how the FBI “conducts surveillance, selects targets, or allocates investigative resources,” and the government otherwise had failed to persuasively describe how disclosure would risk circumvention of the law.

Feb. 9, 2026

Zavala v. Immigration & Customs Enf’t (W.D. Pa.) — denying a requester’s motion for attorney’s fees; concluding the requester, who had sought copies of portions of his A-file and related records, was not “eligible” for fee recovery since he did not “substantially prevail”; explaining the “Court never ordered relief to Plaintiff,” who ultimately filed a notice of voluntary dismissal, and the requester’s alternative “catalyst theory” argument failed because he could not demonstrate “causation”; noting the government’s processing delays were “neither unexplained nor unusually long,” especially in light of a “uncontroverted backlog,” and were instead more likely the result of “administrative delays . . . as well as the necessity of inter-agency searches and responses”; noting further how the government has started processing “prior to the lawsuit being filed.”

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 Feb. 5 & 6, 2026

Feb. 6, 2026

Finkelstein v. Nat’l Insts. of Health (D.D.C.) — granting the requester’s motion for attorney fees and costs and awarding the full amount requested, $36,973.65; concluding the requester was “eligible” for a fee award and “substantially prevailed” under the “catalyst theory” because the agency (1) “repeatedly refused to provide an estimated date of completion,” (2) “categorically denied [in its Answer] that ‘Plaintiff is entitled to . . . any relief whatsoever,’” (3) left unresolved “discrepancies in the [evidentiary] record as to how and when” it “conducted its search,” and (4) “amended and re-released material . . . initially withheld from disclosure” after the requester “challenged some . . . redactions”; concluding also that the requester was “entitled to fees” because the requester is an “investigative journalist” and sought records that would serve the public interest, did not otherwise have a private or “purely commercial” interest in disclosure, and the government did not have a reasonable basis for its withholdings; rejecting the agency’s challenge to the reasonableness of the requester’s sought-after fee amount.

Feb. 5, 2026

Informed Consent Action Network v. Food & Drug Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s Open America motion to “stay proceedings for eighteen months due to significant records demands imposed on Defendants by a district court in Texas”; rejecting the requester’s argument, “[a]t the outset,” that the FOIA denies courts the authority to authorize judicial stays; noting, with respect to the existence of “exception circumstances,” that the agencies remain “subject to increasing production rates . . . ranging from a total of 90,000 to 180,000 pages per month” in other litigation, and these orders have significantly impacted available resources for processing other requests; noting also the agencies’ efforts to “triage the substantial demands” of this other ongoing litigation; concluding the government has otherwise demonstrate “due diligence” in complying with the FOIA, whether considered in general or with respect to the specific request 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 Feb. 4, 2026

Novak v. Cent. Intelligence Agency (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning a requester’s access to records about her mother’s officially acknowledged service at the CIA, granting in part and denying in part the agency’s motion for summary judgment; concluding, with respect to Exemption 1, that records were properly exempt from automatic declassification, despite their age (which, in the case of two records, was “more than 50 years old”), because of ongoing sensitivity, as “plausibly” explained by the agency’s declarant in sufficient detail; accordingly rejecting the requester’s request for in camera review; opining also that an agency “is entitled to a presumption that it complied with the obligation to disclose reasonably segregable material”; holding further, with respect to Exemption 3, that the agency properly relied on the CIA Act of 1949 to withhold various categories of information; finally, concluding the agency failed to meet its burden to redact “personal information” about “third-party individuals, i.e., individuals not employed by the CIA”; noting, for example, how “the CIA has not made any real effort to determine whether the third parties involved are still alive,” or whether they have cognizable privacy interests “at stake”; granting the CIA another opportunity to reassess its Exemption 6 withholding and to submit additional affidavits with a renewed motion for summary judgment.

Judicial Watch v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C) — ruling that the FBI properly relied on Exemption 7(E) to redact the total amount it paid Twitter for legal-process requests in each calendar quarter from 2016 to 2023, reasoning that while the existence of the FBI’s requests is publicly known, the payment amounts would reveal how frequently the FBI employs this technique and which platforms it prioritizes. In reaching its conclusion, the court deferred to the FBI’s judgment about the risks of disclosure, and plaintiff conceded that releasing the information would cause foreseeable harm

Carzoglio v. Executive Office for U.S. Attys (D.D.C.) — holding that EOUSA properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to categorically withhold all records concerning the criminal prosecution of a former police chief whose department had investigated and arrested plaintiff in an earlier case; explaining that plaintiff’s interest in challenging his conviction was not a cognizable “public interest” under the statute, and that the prosecution of the police chief for tax evasion “had nothing to do with” plaintiff’s earlier investigation or conviction.

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

Court opinion issued Feb. 3, 2026

Crisman v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding, in relevant part, that the agencies’ searches for responsive records were reasonable and adequately supported, and that the requester’s inapt reliance on Glomar responses for other records did not amount to a meaningful challenge; rejecting also the requester’s argument that DOJ’s “policy of allowing an FBI official to classify a record after receiving a FOIA requestion violates the terms of Executive Order 12958,” given controlling precedent on sub-delegation in Mobley v. CIA, 806 F.3d 568 (D.C. Cir. 2015).

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

Court opinion issued Jan. 30, 2026

Kalbers v. DOJ (9th Cir.) -- reversing district’s court’s decision and holding that Exemption 3, in conjunction with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), protected nearly all records provided by Volkswagen to DOJ pursuant to federal grand jury subpoena; rejecting the district court’s approach that focused on whether the documents themselves were inherently revealing and reasoning that disclosure would necessarily reveal matters occurring before the grand jury by exposing the scope and direction of its investigation into Volkswagen’s emissions fraud; remanding only for consideration of whether four unmarked documents must be disclosed.

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 Jan. 28 & 29, 2026

Jan. 29 2026

Advocates for Human Rights v. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Servs. (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning access to “applications for T visas,” as well as “three categories of associated documents,” granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; holding, as an initial matter, that 8 U.S.C. § 1367(a)(2), which was enacted in 1997 and lacks any cross-reference to the FOIA, still qualifies as a withholding provision for purposes of Exemption 3, despite another subsection of Section 1367 having been amended in 2013 after the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009; holding further that the agency had “invoked Exemption 3 indiscriminately” by failing to recognize how Section “1367(a)(2)’s strict confidentiality does not extend to all T visa applications,” but instead specifically excludes from its scope “fully denied T visa applications”; remanding to the agency with instructions to conduct another search and identify “finally denied” visa applications and related records for possibly disclosure; concluding, at the same time, that the agency properly withheld certain “fully approved T visa applications and related records.”

Informed Consent Action Network v. Food & Drug Admin. (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for an Open America stay; rejecting the requester’s argument that the FOIA does not provide courts with the authority to stay proceedings; concluding the agency adequately demonstrated the existence of “exceptional circumstances,” as well as “due diligence” in its efforts to process the request at issue; noting, with respect to “exceptional circumstances,” that the FDA was currently subject to judicial orders in the Northern District of Texas that require the production of “over nine million pages of records by October 1, 2026.”

Jan. 28, 2026

Am. Wild Horse Campaign v. Bureau of Land Mgmt. (D.D.C.) — upon review of a magistrate’s Report and Recommendations on the requester’s motion for attorney’s fees and costs, granting in part and denying in part the motion; holding, firstly, that the requester was “eligible” for fees on a catalyst theory because the agency changed its legal position “in response to the Court’s orders and Plaintiff’s efforts,” and its efforts to negotiate with the requester in “good faith” did not seriously suggest it would have provided any supplemental productions beyond what it originally disclosed to the requester; holding, further, that all four “entitlement” factors weighed in favor of a fee award; of note, rejecting the agency’s argument that its basis for nondisclosure had been “colorable or reasonable,” when its sole position in litigation had been that the request at issue was “too ambiguous to merit processing”; with respect to the fee amount, concluding it would be reasonable to allow recovery on (1) time spent preparing an opposition to the agency’s motion to dismiss that was ultimate dismissed as moot, (2) time spent preparing for a motion hearing, (3) “time spent reviewing records . . . not merely to satisfy the curiosity that prompted [the requester] to file its FOIA request in the first place, but to ensure that nothing further remained to litigate,” and (4) “time devoted to the unsuccessful negotiation over attorney’s fees”; likewise holding that the magistrate’s “proposed award of fees on fees is reasonable”; finally, awarding the requester a total of $58,741.78 in fees and costs.

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

Court opinion issued Jan. 27, 2026

Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability, Inc. v. Nat’l Sec. Agency (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion to reconsider a January 2024 summary judgment opinion based on a “purported intervening change in law,” namely, the D.C. Circuit’s July 2025 decision in Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability, Inc. v. Dep’t of Justice; holding, firstly, that the Circuit’s decision was not controlling due to important differences in the scope of the requests at issue, which had important implications for the government’s obligation to conduct a search; holding, moreover, that the Circuit’s decision did not constitute a significant change in the law because it construction of earlier precedent did not undermine the instant court’s legal conclusions about the availability of categorical Glomar responses.

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

Court opinion issued Jan. 22, 2026

Checksfield v. IRS (2nd Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that the IRS properly relied on Exemption 3, in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103, to withhold in full third-party tax returns or return information; rejecting requester’s argument that any exceptions to non-disclosure applied.

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