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