FOIA News: OIP "updates" multiple sections of FOIA Guide

The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy has revised seven sections of its online-only Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act over the past six weeks. See list below. When we last checked the Guide in early December, we criticized OIP for excluding many new court decisions from its updates. OIP’s efforts primarily remain lackluster.

• Exemption 1 (posted Jan. 7, 2025) (“primarily includes case law, guidance, and statutes up until November 30, 2022”)

• Exemption 3 (posted Dec. 20, 2024) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until September 30, 2022”)

• Exemption 4 (posted Jan. 29, 2025) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until December 31, 2022”)

• Exemption 7(B) (posted Dec. 10, 2024) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until September 30, 2023”)

• Exemption 7(F) (posted Jan. 21, 2025) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until January 31, 2024”)

• Exclusions (posted Dec. 20, 2024) (“primarily includes case law . . . up until May 31, 2024”).

• Reverse FOIA (updated Jan. 15, 2025) (primarily includes case law . . . up until [actual cut-off date]”). What OIP’s “actual cut-off date” is for “Reverse FOIA” is a mystery. To quote Rick Perry, “oops.” Stay tuned for another update!

Job, jobs, jobs: Two more for this week

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./CPB, GS 7-9, Wash, DC, closes 1/31/25 (agency only)

Gov’t Info Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 9, Fort Jackson, SC, closes 2/3/25 (non-public).

FOIA News: More annual reports available

We have located several more annual FOIA reports published by agencies since we first posted an initial batch on January 6, 2025. Only a few warrant commentary.

• Council of the Inspectors Gen. on Integrity & Efficiency: CIGIE did not fulfill its efficiency mission in FY 2024 with respect to processing FOIA requests. The agency completed only 100 requests after starting the fiscal year with 56 requests on hand and receiving an additional 207 requests.

• Dep’t of the Interior: The Department treaded water in FY 2024, receiving 8305 requests and fulfilling 8,426 requests; its request backlog rose slightly from 4,320 in FY 2023 to 4,412 at the end of FY 2024.

• Securities & Exchange Comm’n: The SEC received 10,811 requests and processed 10,985 requests, cutting its request backlog from 819 in FY 2023 to 475 at the end of FY 2024. Although the agency’s records are often sought by commercial requesters, the agency collected a meager $311 in fees while bearing more than $13.2 million in processing costs.

• AmeriCorps

• Amtrak

• Fed. Election Comm’n

• Merit Sys. Prot. Bd.

• Millennium Challenge Corp.

All agencies are required to publish their annual reports on their websites by March 1, 2025.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Weekly report Jan. 27, 2025

The 90-day hiring freeze imposed by the White House on January 20, 2025, has predictably reduced the number of fillable FOIA positions. Below are vacancies that might be exempt from that freeze.

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 12-13, Arlington, VA, closes 1/27/25 (non-public).

Gov. Info. Specialist, Def. Intelligence Agency, GS 13, Arlington, VA, closes 1/28/25 (public).

Gov. Info Specialist, Dep’t of the Air Force, NH 3, Scott AFB, closes 1/28/25 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./USCIS, GS 12, remote, closes 1/29/25 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GG 12, Fort Meade, MD, closes 2/1/25 (public).

Info. Release Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 9-12, remote, closes 2/3/25 (non-public).

Court opinions issued Jan. 24, 2025

Am. First Legal Found. v. USDA (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that Exemption 5’s presidential communications privilege protected agency strategic plans to promote voter registration and voter participation that were submitted to the White House pursuant to an Executive Order; rejecting appellant’s argument that several agency declarations, the Executive Order, and a White House fact sheet undermined the White House’s sworn statements about the nature and use of the strategic plans.

Human Rights Def. Ctr v. U.S. Park Police (D.C. Cir.) -- (1) reversing district court’s decision that the names of police officers involved in three tort settlements were protected by Exemption 6 (and ordering their disclosure), because the agency’s showing was “wholly conclusory, lacking even minimal substantiation of the officers’ privacy interest or the potential harm from disclosing their names”; moreover, finding that the Park Police failed to meet the foreseeable harm test; and (2) vacating the district court’s order preventing plaintiff-appellant from disclosing, disseminating, or making use of the names of two settlement claimants inadvertently released; concluding that “neither FOIA nor any inherent judicial authority” enabled an agency to seek a court order to limit the effects of its error, and opining that a contrary Tenth Circuit decision neglected to properly consider “important limitations on courts’ inherent authority”; expressing no opinion as to whether a court may claw back inadvertently released documents that are “subject to any independent legal prohibition on disclosure such as applies to classified documents”, also declining to consider whether the First Amendment prevented the district court from issuing its clawback order.

NB: Congratulations to our colleague Ryan Mulvey, who filed an amicus brief for Americans For Prosperity Foundation in support of the appellant on the clawback dispute. Ryan authored an AFPF post about the case here.

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

FOIA News: FCC raises FOIA fees

On January 23, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission published a notice announcing increases to its hourly FOIA processing fees due to the government-wide salary increases on January 1, 2025.

Court opinion issued Jan. 22, 2025

Sejas v. U.S. Attorney’s Office (S.D.N.Y.) -- granting government’s motion for summary judgment because pro se plaintiff, who sought records pertaining to three Bolivian individuals, neglected to administratively appeal agency’s denial pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C).

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

FOIA News: This and that

• In fiscal year 2024, the Defense Department’s Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff received more than 1500 requests targeting 401 officials from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Law Street Media analysis.

• The New York Times filed a FOIA lawsuit on January 21, 2025, that seeks access to former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report about the Trump classified documents case.

• The Government Attic recently posted heavily-redacted memos from DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel concerning the Treasury’s ability to issue a $1 trillion coin if Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling.

• The FBI’s Vault recently recently added the personnel records of James Kalstrom, who notably headed the criminal investigation into the TWA Flight 800 crash in 1996; part 4 of OJ Simpson’s file; and various records about Sheldon Adelson.

• The 2024 annual FOIA report of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is not currently accessible on the White House’s new website, but it is available here. The FOIA resources of the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) have been archived here; the Office of Management and Budget’s FOIA resources are here.

FOIA News: ICYMI, audio of D.C. Circuit argument

On January 14, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard Brown v. FBI, No. 23-5244, which raised two issues regarding FBI’s investigation of the 2015 San Bernardino attack: (1) whether appellee properly construed the scope of appellant’s request under FOIA ; and (2) whether appellee satisfied its burden of demonstrating that disclosure of the material withheld under Exemption 7(D) would foreseeably harm an interest protected by that exemption.

Court opinion issued Jan. 17, 2025

Helmer v. U.S. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) -- determining that: (1) State Department performed adequate searches for various records concerning Sir Zelman Cowen, the nineteenth Governor-General of Australia; (2) plaintiff’s claim that State failed to timely respond to his request was moot; and (3) plaintiff lacked standing to bring a policy-or-practice claim because he never showed that he was realistically threatened by a repetition of State’s alleged policy of practice of unjustified delay.

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