FOIA Advisor

Court opinions issued Feb. 11, 2022

Court Opinions (2015-2023)Allan BlutsteinComment

Graham v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- granting summary judgment to government after finding that plaintiff failed to identify any public policy harms that would override criminal justice interests favoring enforcement of plaintiff’s voluntary waiver of FOIA rights in his plea agreement.

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. U.S. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) -- deciding that: (1) agency did not submit sufficient information to permit court to evaluate whether agency properly invoked Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold two categories of records concerning its handling of requests from congressional committee chairs; and (2) agency improperly redacted “simple statistics” and other factual information from weekly report that did not fall within deliberative process privilege or meet foreseeable harm provision.

Saterlee v. IRS (W.D. Mo.) -- ruling that: (1) agency performed adequate search, except in one instance, for various certificate of assessments and notices of federal tax liens concerning plaintiff; (2) agency failed to prove that it properly withheld employee’s oath of office pursuant to Exemption 6, but it properly used same exemption to withhold other records from employee’s personnel file.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.