Monthly Roundup: May 2026

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

Monthly Roundup: April 2026

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 May.

Court opinions

We identified and summarized 11 opinions in April, a sharp decreased from March (47 opinions). Of note, in Animal Legal Def. Fund v. U.S. Dep't. of Agric. (N.D. Cal.) the court clarified that FOIA’s "reading room" provision only covers existing records, not documents yet to be created. With a nod to A Christmas Carol, the court explained that the statute does not reach "mere possibilities in the future, like the shadows swirling around Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come." While acknowledging that transparency is FOIA’s ultimate goal, the court emphasized it was “bound by the plain meaning of the statute” rather than what might simply “further the statute’s primary objective.”

Also of interest was Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights v. DHS (S.D.N.Y.), where the court ruled that a partial government shutdown did not excuse DHS from its court-ordered FOIA production obligations. The court dismissed the government’s attempt to use the "political question doctrine" to pause the litigation, calling the argument "risible, if not sanctionable" and stating the agency could not unilaterally stay its own deadlines without court relief.

Top news

• On April 16, 2026, a federal grand jury indicted David Morens, a longtime National Institutes of Health advisor and confidant of Anthony Fauci, on charges tied to an alleged scheme to evade FOIA requests related to COVID‑19 research grants. Charges include conspiracy, destruction or concealment of federal records, and aiding and abetting. The case follows a 2024 House select committee memo detailing similar allegations and has drawn extensive coverage across major outlets (e.g., NYT, WSJ, Politico, WaPo, Axios).

• The Department of Justice released its long-delayed FY 2025 FOIA Annual Report, revealing a 20 percent increase in requests from FY 2024. At the same time, the number of requests processed declined, pushing the DOJ’s request backlog up by roughly a third to more than 29,000 requests.

• On April 2, 2026, the FOIA Advisory Committee approved two recommendations, one concerning agency FOIA logs and the other to formally establish the committee as a statutory advisory committee.

May events

May 6: DOJ/OIP Procedural Requirement, and Fee and Fee Waivers Training

May 7: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

May 11-14: NextGen 3.0 FOIA Tech Showcase

May 13: DOJ/OIP Litigation Training

May 20: DOJ/OIP Administrative Appeals, FOIA Compliance & Customer Service Training

Monthly Roundup: March 2026

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 April.

Court opinions

We identified 47 opinions in March, the largest number of opinions we have seen since March 2020 (52 opinions). Of note, in WP Co. LLC v. Nat’l Highway Traffic Safety Admin. (D.D.C. Mar. 25. 2026), which concerned records about crashes involving advanced driver-assistance systems, the court held that some data—like Tesla’s software-version and crash narrative information—could be withheld as confidential business information under Exemption 4, while other categories (including certain industry data and location details) required further scrutiny. Significantly, the court took a broad view of the foreseeable harm requirement in the Exemption 4 context, rejecting plaintiff’s argument that harm must come only from direct competitive use and recognizing reputational, inferential, and data-sharing harms.

Also of interest: Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. CDC (D.D.C. Mr. 31, 2026 (allowing policy-or-practice claim to proceed against HHS for closing the CDC's entire FOIA office and rerouting all requests); and Heritage Found. v. DHS (D.D.C. Mar. 16, 2026) (rejecting government’s argument that plaintiff’s request involving more than 300,000 potentially responsive records was unreasonably described or unduly burdensome).

Top news

* Four cabinet departments, Agriculture, DHS, DOJ, and HHS, failed to post their annual FOIA reports in March. The government has not publicly explained the reasons for the delays.

* The Department of Veterans Affairs, which posted its annual report on March 27th, allowed its request backlog to balloon 130 percent from FY 2024 to FY 2025.

* The Office of National Cyber Security, a component of the Executive Office of the President, established in 2021, proposed its first-ever FOIA and Privacy Act regulations on March 31st.

April calendar

Apr. 2: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

Apr. 8: DOJ/OIP training, Introduction to the Freedom of Information Act

Apr. 20-22: Graduate School USA training, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts Course

Apr. 21: D.C. Circuit oral argument, Samara Simmons v. Dep’t of State, No. 25-5176

Apr. 22: DOJ/OIP training, Processing a Request from Start to Finish

Apr. 24: Deadline for agencies to submit FY26 data for quarter 2

Monthly Roundup: Feb. 2026

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 March.

Court opinions

We posted and summarized 21 opinions in February. Of note, in Levin v. NHTSA (D.D.C.) the court rejected the agency’s reliance on the deliberative-process privilege after finding it failed to articulate any specific foreseeable harm from disclosure and instead relied on boilerplate assertions, ordering NHTSA to release records concerning its proposed guidelines on distracted driving. And in Aaronson v. DOJ (D.D.C.), the court rejected the FBI’s Glomar response for a pseudonymous employee because disclosure would not reveal any real individual’s identity; it therefore ordered additional searches for records concerning the FBI’s alleged impersonation of media members.

Top news

• On February 23, 2026, Judge Aileen Cannon blocked the release of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the classified documents investigation involving Donald Trump. The ruling by Judge Cannon—which arose in parallel with ongoing FOIA litigation seeking the report—likely keeps it secret indefinitely.

• Early FY 2025 FOIA annual reports released in February showed increased request volumes and growing backlogs at several agencies, including NARA, the Dep’t of Transportation, and the Dep’t of Education.

March calendar

Mar. 1: Deadline for agencies to post FY 2025 annual reports

Mar. 5: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting.

Mar. 10: Hearing in Am. Transparency v. HHS, No. 21-02821 (D.D.C.) re: royalty payments to NIH scientists

Mar. 15-21: Sunshine Week

Mar. 15-17: Second annual Sunshine Fest

Mar. 16: “Freedom of Information Day”; Chief FOIA Officer Report publication deadline

Mar. 18: AFP Foundation Sixth Annual Sunshine Week Symposium

TBA: DOJ’s Sunshine Week award event

Monthly roundup: January 2026

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 February.

Court opinions

We posted and summarized 17 opinions in January. Highlights include Am. First Legal Found. v. U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office (D.D.C.), in which the court held that the U.S. Government Accountability Office is not subject to FOIA because it is a legislative-branch agency. In Leopold v. DOJ (D.D.C. Jan. 15, 2026), on remand from the D.C. Circuit, the court found that DOJ established reasonably foreseeable harm to Exemption 8 interests if an independent monitor’s report were disclosed assessing HSBC Bank’s anti–money‑laundering and sanctions compliance program.

Top news

• EPA plans to rescind its regulation mandating expedited processing for FOIA requests and appeals involving environmental justice, as outlined in a proposed rule published on January 27th.

• On January 15th, the Defense Department eliminated its regulations pertaining to its Stars and Stripes newspaper following its solicitation of public comments in 2024 concerning the newspaper’s FOIA access rights, among other things.

• On January 20, 2026, records from the first Trump administration became subject to FOIA for the first time

• Effective January 22, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security ceased accepting paper or emailed FOIA requests.

• The National FOIA Hall of Fame, founded in 1996 by the First Amendment Center and now under the leadership of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project, inducted 16 new members, including OIP co-founder Richard Huff and the current OGIS Director, Alina Semo.

February calendar

Feb. 4: DOJ/OIP hosts Virtual Advanced Freedom of Information Act Training, 10:00am to 1:30pm EST.

Feb. 6: Deadline for agencies that received fewer than 100 requests in Fiscal Year 2024 to submit their 2026 Chief FOIA Officer Reports to DOJ/OIP

Feb. 13: Deadline to submit nominations to the DOJ for the 2026 Sunshine Week FOIA Awards.