Am. Wild Horse Campaign v. U.S Bureau pf Land Mgmt. (D.D.C.) -- concluding that BLM’s search for records relating to the Rock Springs Grazing Association was adequate “in interpreting plaintiff’s FOIA requests, the locations to be searched, search terms and methods used (with one exception), and the selection of custodians (with one exception).”
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Outside Legal Counsel PLC v. Transp. Sec. Admin. (E.D. Mich.) - - denying pro se plaintiff-attorney’s request for $402 in litigation costs because TSA showed that it meaningfully responded to plaintiff’s request once received and plaintiff’s lawsuit did not change the agency’s position or cause the release of records; declining to opine on whether the Sixth Circuit correctly decided that pro se FOIA plaintiffs who are attorneys are barred from collecting attorney’s fees.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Democracy Forward Found. v. OMB (D.D.C.) -- denying plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction that sought expedited processing of reduction-in-force and reorganization plans maintained by OMB and OPM, as well as production of “approved” plans by a date certain; reasoning that plaintiff failed to show it was entitled to the “extraordinarily rare” remedy because, among other things, there was no “imminent event” indicating that the requested records would become stale if released though the normal FOIA process.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Greenspan v. EOUSA (D.D.C.) -- in case seeking investigative records about named individuals who operated a heroin ring in Chicago in the 1990s, ruling that: (1) DEA was precluded from using Glomar response regarding one named individual because DOJ publicly filed an IRS affidavit in a forfeiture matter that expressly acknowledged DEA’s investigation of same individual; (2) both the DEA and FBI were precluded from using Glomar responses with respect to a second named individual (currently Nigeria’s president), because the above-referenced IRS affidavit acknowledged that that individual was criminally investigated by those agencies, among others; and (3) CIA’s Glomar response concerning the Nigerian president was not waived by the presence of documents in the agency’s FOIA Reading Room that generally addresses Nigeria’s involvement with heroin narcotrafficking during the mid-1980s.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Sanders v. FBI (W.D. Wis.) -- concluding that: (1) FBI’s search for records concerning plaintiff was inadequate because the agency failed to explain why it was reasonable to search only its Central Records System; it neglected to use reasonable variations of plaintiff’s name; and it neglected to explain why its initial search yielded no records and its second (seemingly identical) search located three pages; and (2) FBI did not adequately justify its Exemption 7(C) Glomar response to portion of plaintiff’s request that sought records mentioning plaintiff and various third parties, and remarking that it wasn’t clear why redactions wouldn’t sufficiently protect third parties’ privacy interests.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Campaign Legal Ctr. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning records about the addition of a “citizenship question” to the census, granting in part and denying in part the parties’ renewed cross-motions for summary judgment on remand; holding that a “10-page email thread between DOJ, Commerce, and White House staff” was properly withheld under Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege, despite post-dating the decision to add the citizenship question to the census, because it was “‘not so much [intended] to explain the agency’s already-decided policy,’ but an ‘iterative weighing of legal and policy concerns’”; holding further that records reflecting discussions about a response to the Washington Post, draft correspondence with a Member of Congress, and inter-agency correspondence were all similarly protected by the deliberative-process privilege; declining, however, to accept the adequacy of the agency’s arguments for the privilege as applied to internal e-mail regarding the census and American Community Survey; noting the agency’s declarations do not “describe the withheld emails with sufficient particularity,” and “[a] one-paragraph explanation without detail, or the document itself [submitted for in camera review], is insufficient”; finally, holding that, while the agency could technically satisfy the requirements to withhold draft responses to interrogatories from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under Exemption 5, it had failed to meet the foreseeable-harm standard by not connecting “two comments . . . about two lines of a 24-page” document to the asserted “broader harm of weakened inter agency relationships” or the internal “chill” of agency deliberations.
Webb v. Office of Mgmt. & Budget (D.D.C.) — in a case brought by a “highly vexatious [pro se] litigant,” granting, in relevant part, the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that OMB conducted an adequate search, and rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments that the agency improperly “characterized his FOIA request as implicating classified records” and failed to locate “records indicating that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory”; noting the plaintiff’s “unsubstantiated assertion that there must be records indicating that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory is the kind of ‘purely speculative claim[] about the existence and discoverability of other documents’ that cannot rebut the presumption of good faith accorded to detailed agency affidavits describing a search.”
Soliman v. Threat Screening Ctr. (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment; holding that the Threat Screening Center (formerly, the Terrorist Screening Center) is a subcomponent of the FBI’s National Security Branch, rather than its own “agency,” and therefore the plaintiff failed to exhaust administrative remedies by filing an appeal challenging the adequacy of the agency’s search for responsive records; notably, the FBI did not raise any specific exhaustion argument in its motion for summary judgement, but only as a defense in its answer.
Aviation Servs. LLC, et al. v. Small Bus. Admin.; Russo, et al. v. Small Bus. Admin. (N.D. Cal.) — in a pair of consolidated cases concerning the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (“EIDL”) program, granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; holding, firstly, that the agency’s failure to provide timely determinations did not, in and of itself, provide grounds for any declaratory or injunctive relief, particularly since the plaintiffs failed to plead any “policy or practice” claim; also holding that the agency, in large part, conducted an adequate search, but reserving judgment as to certain aspects of the reasonableness of the search methodology due to deficient supporting declarations; directing the agency to provide more detail about certain search terms and to run some supplemental searches; concluding the agency properly withheld case file notes under Exemption 5, in conjunction with the deliberative-process privilege, and that it properly withheld the bank account numbers of individual EIDL applicants under Exemption 6; yet also ruling the agency could not use Exemption 6 to withhold either the names and addresses of loan program participants, or the bank account numbers of “non-personal entities,” i.e., any “company or business entity”; rejecting the agency’s categorical use of Exemption 6 to withhold third-party EIDL application information, including aggregate statistical data, because the agency had not made the necessary showing that “all responsive information” refers to “individually-owned or closely-held businesses” or would otherwise be personally identifying; concluding the agency correctly used Exemption 4 to withhold a company’s “confidential unit pricing”; finally, rejecting the requesters’ “reading-room” claims for failure to meet the “threshold” requirement of describing what records have not been made available under 552(a)(2)(B)-(C) in the agency’s FOIA library.
Jewish Legal News, Inc. v. Dep’t of Educ. (N.D. Cal.) — granting in part and denying in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment; holding the requester lacked standing to challenge “certain redactions and withholdings in the FOIA response that were originally made in response to previous FOIA requests” and only “[re-]produced here in response” to an item of the request at issue; holding also that the agency properly applied Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege, except with respect to emails that reflect communications with persons using “accounts outside the government”; rejecting the agency’s contention that such non-government accounts may have been White House employees as unsupported by adequate specificity in its Vaughn index; concluding the agency properly applied Exemptions 6 and 7(A); rejecting the plaintiff’s policy-and-practice claim predicated on the agency having taken “several months to process and produce documents on a rolling bases,” and explaining that productions are distinct from a “determination,” which is what must be provided within a specified timeframe; denying without prejudice the requester’s motion to the extent it alleged a failure to conduct an adequate search or to reasonably segregate non-exempt material from the records at issue.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Farris v. Garland (D.D.C.) -- determining that: (1) the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys conducted a reasonable search for certain records related to plaintiff’s conviction for drug trafficking, and it had no obligation to obtain records maintained by other federal or local agencies; (2) government properly withheld certain information from investigative “DEA 6 Reports” pursuant to Exemptions 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E).
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Forest Serv. (D.D.C.) -- finding that: (1) federal contractor’s appraisal of a land exchange between the government and defendant-intervenor, a private mining company, qualified as an “agency record” because the agency “constructively controlled” the appraisal based on the four-factor test set forth in Burka v. HHS, 87 F.3d 508 (D.C. Cir. 1996); using the same test, finding that the contractor’s documents containing data underlying the appraisal were not agency records; (2) agency justified withholding information that would result in foreseeable economic harm to defendant-intervenor, but offered only inadmissible hearsay as to whether withheld information that would result in foreseeable harms to the appraiser and third-party experts’ business interests; (3) agency properly invoked Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold the appraisal, summary, and technical report as pre-decisional and deliberative, but rejecting the reasonableness of the harms foreseen by the agency; and (4) agency’s segregability analysis was insufficient because the agency inconsistently processed an appraisal summary and a technical report.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Mar. 24, 2025
Cohodes v. Dep’t of Justice (N.D. Cal.) — after awarding $180,808.50 in attorney’s fees, and following supplemental briefing precipitated by plaintiff having “estimated [certain] fees in the initial fees motion and document[ing] them only in the reply,” granting plaintiff an additional $73,948.95 “in fees for [its] fees motion” because “the hourly rates and hours spent are reasonable”; rejecting the government’s request to apply an across-the-board reduction; in total, awarding the requester $254,757.45.
Basey v. Dep’t of Justice (D. Alaska) — holding the agency conducted a reasonable search given the “context of [the requester’s] broad request”; describing the execution of searches in the components “most likely to have responsive records,” as well as the FBI’s separate search as recipient of a referral from EOUSA; noting the requester’s “allegations of bad faith rest on innuendo” and rest on “purely speculative claims about the existence and discoverability of other documents”; holding also that the government properly applied: (1) Exemption 3, in conjunction with the Child Victims’ & Child Witnesses’ Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3509(d), to withhold “‘interviews of a minor victim and explicit media involving’ child sexual abuse,” (2) Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege, together with Exemptions 6 and 7(C), to withhold records pertaining to interviews of victims abused by the requester, and (3) Exemption 7(E) to withhold records concerning the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team and Cyber Division’s Innocent Images National Initiative Program.
March 25, 2025
Heritage Found. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case where the parties contested the proper meaning of the term “request,” denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and adopting the plaintiff’s proposed interpretation; holding that the FBI improperly split-up the plaintiff’s three-item FOIA request into three separate “requests”; explaining that, despite the agency having issued timely adverse determinations on two of the three parts, the requester was not required to exhaust administrative remedies as to those denials (and the separate denial of a fee waiver) before filing suit on the entirety of its submission after the agency failed to provide a timely response to the third item; suggesting that common usage, relevant caselaw, and statutory context all point to “request” best “refer[ring] to an overall FOIA submission,” rather than individual parts of a multi-item “submission”; noting that, while FOIA provides explicit authority to aggregate or consolidate distinct requests, there is no mention of splitting-up a request; expressing skepticism towards the agency’s contention that ruling for the plaintiff would “allow requesters to strategically circumvent the administrative appeal process.”
Evans v. Cent. Intelligence Agency (D.D.C.) — granting the government’s motion for summary judgment and holding that (1) the CIA’s search for records was adequate, (2) it properly issued a Glomar response pursuant to Exemption 1 as to a portion of the request, and (3) the plaintiff failed to exhaust administrative remedies with respect to the CIA’s use of Glomar with Exemption 3; explaining the plaintiff offered only “mere speculation” about “uncovered documents,” and the agency was not required to “list each system it searched, as opposed to the categories or types of systems”; rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments on the Glomar front, which focused on the level of detail in the agency’s supporting declaration; noting the requester failed to raise any objection in his appeal about the use of Exemption 3 with Glomar.
March 26, 2025
Energy Pol’y Advocates v. Sec. & Exch. Comm’n (D.D.C.) — granting, in part, the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding the agency properly used Exemption 5, in conjunction with the deliberative-process privilege, to withhold calendar entries of a former SEC Chairman; yet concluding that, because many entries in the agency’s Vaughn index lacked adequate specificity and failed to “identify the subject of policy under consideration and instead refer[red] only to policymaking in general,” the agency had not met its burden to justify the withholding of certain e-mail communications between the White House, former SEC Chairman, and senior agency officials; ordering in camera review of the e-mail records; deferring consideration of the agency’s satisfaction of the foreseeable-harm standard for the e-mails, but holding the agency’s argument vis-à-vis the calendar entries was adequate.
Bader Family Found. v. Equal Emp’t Opportunity Comm’n (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion for summary judgment and holding various parts of plaintiff’s request were “reasonably described”; explaining two of the request items in dispute “are not vague and have only one reasonable interpretation,” the agency “has not put forward a sufficiently detailed declaration explaining why . . . [responsive] records are difficult to locate,” and “the agency’s declarations do not sufficiently explain how the post-search efforts . . . would be overly burdensome”; similarly, with respect to the third item in dispute, concluding the agency “can reasonably construe [it] without” further clarification or defined terms, it “cannot definitively say [based on the record] . . . that searching for . . . text messages would be unreasonably burdensome,” and it “has not provided sufficient evidence” about “overly burdensome post-search efforts.”
Judicial Watch v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion to dismiss and holding that plaintiff’s request did not “‘reasonably describe’ the records sought” because it “uses vague words and descriptions,” including the phrase “all records related to”; emphasizing, at the same time, that “[t]here is no bright-line rule barring FOIA requesters from using the phrase “related to,” and a court’s analysis must focus on “whether the request is otherwise so ‘unusually specific’ that it still manages to satisfy FOIA’s reasonable-description requirement”; noting the plaintiff’s request “lacks any custodial limitation and does not specify the type of records sought”; querying “what . . . [the] other ‘related’ records [are] that the agency must look for if the categories of records identified in the latter part of the request are not sufficient.”
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
Mar. 19, 2025
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. U.S. DOGE Serv. (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion for reconsideration of a prior preliminary-injunction ruling that held U.S. DOGE Service was likely an “agency” for FOIA purposes, in large part, because the government’s “arguments could all have been raised during the last round of briefing” and “none of them provides a basis for reconsideration”; acknowledging, nonetheless, that “it would be preferable . . . to review the question of whether [DOGE] is subject to the FOIA on the merits based on a more complete record,” and therefore inviting the requester to file a motion for limited discovery under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d); expressing doubt that the irreparable-harm analysis underlying the Court’s preliminary injunction ruling was erroneous; continuing to point to public statements by President Trump and Elon Musk, as well as press reports, that cast doubt on the government’s various factual claims. [RPM: FOIA Advisor previously reported on this decision when it first issued.]
U.S. Right to Know v. Dep’t of Def. (N.D. Cal.) — granting in party and denying in part the plaintiff’s motion for attorney’s fees; noting the government did “not contest that Plaintiff is eligible to receive an award of fees and costs”; on the question of entitlement, concluding that: (1) the public interest favors the award, as the records, which pertain to COVID-19, could help reveal “‘possible politicization of agency decisionmaking’”; (2) the plaintiff, as a non-profit organization, had no commercial interest in the responsive records; and (3) the agency acted unreasonably by failing to comply with statutory deadlines, or to communicate with the plaintiff “for over two years until after suit was commenced,” and by significantly over-redacting the responsive records in the first instance without any “colorable basis under the law”; ultimately awarding “$74,312.88 in attorneys fees and $688.96 in costs,” or roughly $10,000 less than what plaintiff asked for, after rejecting recovery for: (1) certain administrative tasks, like fixing access problems to USAfx or other “purely clerical tasks,” (2) internal attorney communications that were vaguely described in the ’ fee motion and supporting declarations, (3) pro hac vice fees, and (4) costs related to “expert declarations.”
Mar. 20, 2025
Simmons v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — denying an aggrieved, former State Department employee’s motion for attorney fees in light of her failure to demonstrate under the “catalyst theory” how she “substantially prevailed,” and was therefore eligible for fee recovery; specifically, noting the requester failed to show “this litigation caused [the agency] to comply with her FOIA and Privacy Act requests”; noting also the agency had “immediately started processing records and made several pre-litigation productions”; relatedly concluding the requester “fail[ed] to rebuff evidence that [any] delayed ‘disclosure result[ed] not from the suit but from delayed administrative processing.’”
Leopold v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — on remand from the D.C. Circuit for a “third round of summary judgment,” denying the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment regarding withholding under Exemption 8 of a redacted version of an independent monitor’s report detailing HSBC’s compliance with a deferred prosecution agreement, specifically with respect to the justification for continued non-disclosure under the foreseeable-harm standard; ruling that, while “Exemption 8’s broader protections . . . related to financial institutions apply,” in camera review of the monitor report is needed to resolve the case; noting, inter alia, that another judge “found not harm in disclosing a redacted version,” and that DOJ’s own filings suggest “portions of the . . . [r]eport might be . . . released with minimal risk of harm.”
Crandell v. Nat’l Archives & Records Admin. (4th Cir.) (unpublished) — affirming dismissal of FOIA lawsuit, where the requester failed to exhaust administrative remedies and failed also to demonstrate that the records he had requested “still existed”; modifying the district court’s ruling, however, by ordering the dismissal to be without prejudice.
Mar. 21, 2025
Wiggins v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that the agency conducted an adequate search where it explained the custodial locations searched and the search terms utilized; noting that plaintiff proffered no “evidence” to support its “assertion of missing records”; holding also that the agency failed to offer adequate explanation for its use of Exemption 5 to withhold “undated and unsigned proposed amended jury instructions,” as well as other “unsigned” and either “undated” or “partially dated” litigation documents, including e-mail records between DOJ personnel “regarding the prosecution of plaintiff and the co-defendant’s criminal cases”; explaining that “EOUSA’s cryptic description” for the various “document[s] or categor[ies] of documents” does not establish their deliberative nature; noting also the agency’s “generic assertions of harm to internal discussions . . . parroted throughout the Vaugh index”; with respect to Exemption 7(C), holding that the agency properly redacted “the names and other identifying information of third-party individuals, including Eastern District employees, third-party witnesses, and co-defendants”; finally, concluding that “EOUSA has not properly justified withholding fifty-one sealed pages,” as it “offered no evidence”; directing the government to “supplement the record” and, if appropriate after re-processing, to “move again for dispositive relief.”
Ctr. for Medical Progress v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment and denying the plaintiff’s cross-motion; holding, firstly, that the agency “properly determined the scope of the plaintiff’s FOIA request,” which sought a “specific set of documents” about “grant applications,” especially in light of the plaintiff’s oral and written clarifications upon request from the agency, as well as its agreement to narrow its request post-submission; holding further that the agency conducted an adequate search; noting that “[b]eyond the contract records” that were properly beyond the scope of the request, “the plaintiff provide[d] no further basis to challenge the good faith basis” afforded to the agency’s supporting declarations.
Am. Property Locators, Inc. v. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C.) — in a case involving a commercial-use FOIA request for records about stale checks from CPB, granting the agency’s motion to dismiss and approving its inclusion in a fee estimate of expenses related to carrying out the “business submitter process”; explaining that CBP maintains a special process for notifying “submitters” of “commercial information” so that they can object to disclosure of their information under the FOIA, and that the agency has treated “Limited Payability (stale dated check) records” as triggering this “process”; declining to adopt the government’s recommendation to either apply arbitrary-and-capricious review or Auer deference in lieu of the FOIA’s default de novo review standard; holding that CPB provided a “‘reasonable, non-obstructionist explanation’ . . . for applying the business submitter process” based on its published regulations, and that it appropriately assumed responsive records would “encompass emails between CBP and business submitters regarding the original commercial transaction, the status of payee checks, the occurrence of novel financial transactions, and/or bank account information”; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that any possible exceptions to the business-submitter process applied; noting the “process itself is reasonable” as it “‘give[s] effect to Exemption 4,” among other things; finding no basis in the record to doubt the actual fee estimate of $738; finally, concluding that the requester failed to exhaust by “pay[ing] the required fees before suing the challenge the substance of [its] FOIA request.”
Rhodes v. Internal Revenue Serv. (N.D. Ala.) — granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative remedies; rejecting the requester’s apparent argument, based on the language of his complaint, that “there were no administrative remedies to be exhausted”; rejecting also the requester’s suggestion that the IRS’s determination letter was “insufficient to trigger a duty to exhaust his claims” because it “did not communicate the scope of the documents it withheld” by including a “privilege log.”
Jackson v. Internal Revenue Serv. (N.D. Ala.) — in an almost word-for-word, identical opinion to that published above in Rhodes, granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.
Cahill v. Dep’t of Commerce (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for mootness where a pro se requester admitted the agency “finally complied” with his request prior to filing suit; denying also the requester’s motion for costs because the “Department turned over the video [at issue] without a court order, written agreement, or consent decree,” the record was “outside the scope of [the requester’s] FOIA request,” and “the Department would have been able to meritoriously defend its denial of . . . [the] request by arguing that [the requester] had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies.”
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case seeking access to records related to the “now-closed criminal investigation of former Congressman Matt Gaetz,” in which the requester also pleaded policy-and-practice claims related to the use of Glomar responses and categorical withholdings under Exemptions 6 and 7(C), granting in party and denying in part the government’s motion to dismiss; with respect to allegations about an unlawful Glomar-response policy, holding that CREW can appropriately “aggregate” evidence about the behavior of multiple “components within a larger agency” to sustain its claim; noting, in that respect, how “CREW has identified six instances of potentially violative conduct across four DOJ components,” that this “is numerically sufficient to show a pattern for purposes of a motion to dismiss,” that there is sufficient relation between the examples to suggest a “consistent policy,” and that CREW has otherwise “plead sufficient facts to suggest” the ostensible policy is unlawful; holding also, by contrast, that CREW’s policy-or-practice claim about Exemption 6/7(C) responses must be dismissed because DOJ’s “responses to CREW’s three requests were not uniform,” and therefore undercut any theory that they did not reflect “case-by-case analysis.”
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.