Court opinions
2026
Dates of decisions below. Please contact us if any of the links are broken. For additional sources of FOIA case law, see "Federal court cases" in Useful Links.
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.
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
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.
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.
Jan. 21, 2026
Am. Oversight v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s Rule 12(f) motion to strike twenty-two introductory paragraphs from the requester’s FOIA complaint, which the government argued comprised “entirely irrelevant alleged factual material and editorialized statements”; noting the government “concedes . . . such motions ‘are generally disfavored,’” and that the requester “contests” the supposed irrelevance of the content; concluding none of the paragraphs at issue are “scandalous or prejudicial” and “judicial efficiency is far better served by not required Plaintiff to amend.”
Jan. 20, 2026
Marker v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ. (N.D. Cal.) -- ruling that the department conducted an adequate search for records concerning plaintiff’s federal student loans; rejecting plaintiff’s challenges to the search methodology, concluding that alternative search terms and additional databases would not have produced unique borrower-specific records; further holding that the department was not required to produce records of payments allegedly made to prior commercial servicers because those records were no longer in the department’s possession or control.
Jan. 15, 2026
Leopold v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- on remand from the D.C. Circuit, holding that DOJ properly relied on Exemption 8 to withhold a Monitor Report assessing HSBC’s anti–money laundering and sanctions compliance and met the foreseeable harm requirement because disclosure of any portion of the report would threaten the effectiveness of bank supervision; reasoning that although redactions could mitigate harms such as criminal exploitation, competitive injury, and chilled employee candor, those risks alone did not justify withholding the entire document; further explaining that DOJ showed—through sworn declarations from foreign regulators—that release of even a redacted report would undermine settled expectations of confidentiality and foreseeably chill future cooperation with U.S. monitors and regulators.
Jan. 12, 2026
Landis v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons (D.D.C.) -- holding that Office of Personnel Management properly relied on Exemption 6 to withhold the names and duty stations of Bureau of Prisons employees nationwide for 2017 and 2018, reasoning that BOP employees have significant privacy and safety interests and that disclosure would not meaningfully shed light on BOP operations.
S. Envtl. Law Ctr. v. TVA (E.D. Tenn.) -- determining that: (1) Tennessee Valley Authority performed a reasonable search for agency’s communications with an energy company concerning a proposed gas pipeline, rejecting plaintiff’s challenges to o the search scope, methods, and alleged missing records; (2) TVA did not adequately justify its withholdings of confidential commercial information under Exemption 4 because its categorical explanations were overly broad and did not clearly link specific documents to specific exemption rationales; and (3) TVA was entitled to summary judgment with respect to its redaction of personal contact information under Exemption 6, which plaintiff did not oppose.
Mannon v. U.S. Dep't of Veteran Affairs (E.D. Mich.) -- ruling that plaintiff failed to state a valid FOIA claim because his complaint did not clearly identify what his FOIA request was seeking, referenced conflicting request numbers, and did not specify which records were allegedly improperly withheld; further ruling that amendment would be futile because plaintiff’s proposed new claim was based on alleged destruction of evidence, which does not provide a standalone legal claim.
Jan. 9, 2026
Am. First Legal Found. v. U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion to dismiss, and concluding that the U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) is not subject to FOIA” because it is a legislative-branch agency; explaining that the APA’s exclusion of “the Congress,” which is incorporated into the FOIA’s definition of “agency” at sec. 552(f), is best read as the “entire legislative branch,” including its agencies; rejecting the requester’s arguments that GAO is, in fact, an “establishment in the executive branch” or an “independent regulatory agency.”
Williams & Connolly LLP v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (D.D.C.) — issuing an amended version of the Court’s Oct. 31, 2025 opinion, which concluded that ICE conducted an adequate search for records related to individuals involved in a sanctions evasion case in the Southern District of New York, and that CBP and USCIS properly withheld records pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(C) and met the statute’s foreseeable harm and segregability requirements; explaining in an accompanying order that the amendment was necessary to clarify how resolution of the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment was not “final” and “appealable” because plaintiffs claims against the Department of the Treasury and Department of State “have not yet been adjudicated.”
Kitlinski v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — holding that DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility failed to conduct an adequate search because it did not attempt to identify “journaled emails,” or other archived messages that might have been deleted by the relevant custodian, through its Microsoft M365 document system.
Jan. 6, 2026
Legal Eagle, LLC v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- ruling that plaintiff failed to exhaust its administrative remedies because it neither appealed OIP’s determination that its FOIA request was not reasonably described nor resubmitted a narrowed request; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that no administrative appeal was required, explaining that OIP affirmatively offered both an appeal and an opportunity to reformulate the request, which plaintiff declined; further, dismissing plaintiff’s expedited-processing claim as moot, since OIP had already issued a final response to the FOIA request and there was nothing left to expedite.