Am. Wild Horse Campaign v. BLM (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning a report on the inhuman treatment of animals under BLM care, denying the requester’s motion for fees and holding that it was neither “eligible” nor “entitled” to such fees and costs; explaining that the requester never “substantially prevailed” because the court never ordered any relief, and the requester failed to meet its burden to demonstrate eligibility under the “catalyst theory”; further explaining that the records received by the requester, which were largely “administrative” and already in the requester’s possession, would not benefit the public by increasing its awareness of government activities, and the agency had not be unreasonable in delaying production.

Reclaim the Records v. U.S. Dep't of State (S.D.N.Y.) — in a case concerning a request for the State Department’s “index” of reports concerning deaths of U.S. citizens abroad, granting the government’s motion for summary judgment and upholding its “no responsive records” response; accepting the agency’s representations that it no longer maintained a searchable index of death reports, but stored them in a system that could only retrieve discrete records “manually and one-at-a-time”; explaining that if the agency were to conduct individual search queries to provide the requester with a list of all death reports, that would entail the creation of records, and other “backend” search efforts would implicate non-responsive materials.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.