February 26, 2025
Leopold v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — deciding that: (1) agency improperly relied on the deliberative process privilege’s consultant corollary doctrine to withhold its communications with pending nominees to Senate-confirmed positions, because a nominee has a self-interested, independent stake in the confirmation process; (2) agency properly withheld talking points and many other—but not all— records under the deliberative process privilege; and (3) agency met the foreseeable harm and segregability requirements.
February 25, 2025
Transgender Law Ctr. v. ICE (D.D.C.) — in case concerning agency’s treatment of transgender detainees, concluding that: (1) ICE’s search was deficient because the agency neglected to clearly show that it searched the email accounts of two relevant employees, it unreasonably omitted one search term, and it unreasonably used another search term only in combination with other words; and (2) ICE failed to properly support its withholdings under Exemption 5’s attorney-client and deliberative process privileges, including whether foreseeable harm would result from disclosure; (3) ICE did not show how the records withheld under Exemptions 7(C) and 7(E) met the law enforcement threshold; (4) ICE improperly relied on Exemption 6 to withhold agency email domain addresses, to categorically withhold the names of “lower-level” agency employees and third parties, and to withhold name of a training video narrator.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.