Monthly roundup: January 2026

Below is a summary of the notable FOIA court decisions and news from last month, as well as a look ahead to FOIA events in February.

Court opinions

We posted and summarized 17 opinions in January. Highlights include Am. First Legal Found. v. U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office (D.D.C.), in which the court held that the U.S. Government Accountability Office is not subject to FOIA because it is a legislative-branch agency. In Leopold v. DOJ (D.D.C. Jan. 15, 2026), on remand from the D.C. Circuit, the court found that DOJ established reasonably foreseeable harm to Exemption 8 interests if an independent monitor’s report were disclosed assessing HSBC Bank’s anti–money‑laundering and sanctions compliance program.

Top news

• EPA plans to rescind its regulation mandating expedited processing for FOIA requests and appeals involving environmental justice, as outlined in a proposed rule published on January 27th.

• On January 15th, the Defense Department eliminated its regulations pertaining to its Stars and Stripes newspaper following its solicitation of public comments in 2024 concerning the newspaper’s FOIA access rights, among other things.

• On January 20, 2026, records from the first Trump administration became subject to FOIA for the first time

• Effective January 22, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security ceased accepting paper or emailed FOIA requests.

• The National FOIA Hall of Fame, founded in 1996 by the First Amendment Center and now under the leadership of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project, inducted 16 new members, including OIP co-founder Richard Huff and the current OGIS Director, Alina Semo.

February calendar

Feb. 4: DOJ/OIP hosts Virtual Advanced Freedom of Information Act Training, 10:00am to 1:30pm EST.

Feb. 6: Deadline for agencies that received fewer than 100 requests in Fiscal Year 2024 to submit their 2026 Chief FOIA Officer Reports to DOJ/OIP

Feb. 13: Deadline to submit nominations to the DOJ for the 2026 Sunshine Week FOIA Awards. 

Court opinion issued 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.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued Jan. 28 & 29, 2026

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.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued 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.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: 2nd Circuit hears Epstein FOIA case

Second Circuit signals remand of Epstein FOIA case in light of new transparency act

Radar Online says the Justice Department has “stonewalled” any production of documents related to the federal investigation into convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in the mid-2000s that resulted in his controversial non-prosecution deal.

By Josh Russell, Courthouse News, Jan. 28, 2026

A New York City federal appeals court on Wednesday signaled it was likely to remand a FOIA case seeking documents from the FBI’s 2000s investigation into pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein back to a lower court to consider how the bureau’s public disclosure obligations are now shaped by the Epstein Files Transparency Act and pending appeals from Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

Tabloid website Radar Online sued the FBI in Manhattan federal court in 2017 — one year before the Miami Herald ran a bombshell exposé on the disgraced billionaire Epstein’s sex crimes — seeking production of documents from the federal investigation into Epstein’s underage sex trafficking operation, but the lower court sided with the Department of Justice in 2024, ruling on a second summary judgment that the FBI was right to decline the FOIA request for privacy concerns and issues related to the Maxwell case.

During oral arguments on Wednesday, Radar asked the appeals court to vacate the lower court’s “categorical, blanket” exemption from the disclosure obligations under the Freedom of Information Act and to remand the case back to the District Court judge to reconsider the FBI’s FOIA obligations and how that may align with the documents that are expected to be released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Read more here.

FOIA News: D.C. Circuit to Hold Oral Argument in FOIA Clawback

On Thursday, January 29, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral argument in Gun Owners of America, Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, No. 25-5309. A livestream is available here.

This case concerns the proper interpretation of the D.C. Circuit’s decision last year in Human Rights Defense Center v. U.S. Park Police (D.C. Cir. 2025), and the ability of courts to order “clawback” of inadvertently disclosed agency records as an exercise of equitable remedial authority.

The lower court’s decision can be found here.

[FOIA Advisor’s Ryan Mulvey filed an amicus brief in support of the Appellants and reversal. Read it here.]

Court opinion issued 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.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: EPA proposes to stop expediting requests concerning environmental justice

EPA will rescind its environmental justice–based expedited FOIA processing provision, as set forth in a proposed rule published today in the Federal Register. The proposal notes that expedited processing based on “compelling need” would remain available and that environmental justice–related requests would continue to be eligible for fee waivers.

Public comments will be accepted until February 26, 2026.

FOIA News: 2025 annual FOIA reports

Agencies are required to post their Fiscal Year 2025 Annual FOIA Report on their websites no later than March 1, 2026. Here are a few agencies that have gotten off to an early start. As in previous years, we will provide additional updates and summarize the reports issued by the more active FOIA agencies.

• Postal Regulatory Comm’n

• U.S. Comm’n on Civil Rights

• Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (received 140 requests; processed 13 requests)

• Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigations Bd.

• Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency

• Fed. Energy Regulatory Comm’n

• Inter-American Found.

• Nat’l Indian Gaming Comm’n

• Nat’l Mediation Bd.

• Office of Gov’t Ethics

• Privacy & Civil Liberties Bd.

• Selective Service Sys.

• U.S. Int’l Trade Comm’n

• U.S. Postal Serv.

FOIA News: Tax Notes launches FOIA newsletter

A new Freedom of Information Act newsletter, FOIA Findings, was launched in January to focus on how FOIA and open records laws can be used to illuminate tax policy and tax administration.

The newsletter is led by journalist Lauren Locricchio, who will oversee reporting and analysis rooted in documents obtained through FOIA and related disclosure laws. Each edition is designed to surface what agency records actually show—cutting through press releases and policy statements to highlight the evidence behind the decisions.

FOIA Findings is published by Tax Notes, a leading source of tax news and analysis founded in 1970. For more than five decades, Tax Notes has provided in-depth reporting and analysis for tax professionals, policymakers, academics, and journalists

Readers can subscribe to FOIA Findings on LinkedIn or through the Tax Notes website. You can find the newsletter here.