Monthly Roundup: May 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 June.

Court opinions

We identified and summarized 15 opinions in May. Of note, in Mora v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C. May 18), the court granted summary judgment to CBP in a case brought by immigration attorneys alleging that the agency maintained an unlawful policy or practice of ignoring FOIA deadlines. The court found that CBP's backlog resulted from "exceptional circumstances" rather than deliberate noncompliance, and declined to follow two Northern District of California decisions that had applied the Ninth Circuit's different policy-or-practice standard.

Also of interest was Alper v. DOJ (D.D.C. May 14), in which the court ruled that the public interest in corroborating a death-row inmate's innocence claim outweighed the privacy interests of FBI agents, private individuals, and hotel guests whose statements supported that claim, ordering disclosure of all three categories of records.

Top news

• On May 7th, DOJ/OIP announced that all agencies had finalized their FY 2025 Annual FOIA reports. Government-wide, agencies received 1,707,197 requests — a 13.7% increase over FY 2024 — and processed a record-high 1,635,055 requests. The backlog, however, grew 28.2% to 339,671 requests, while total FOIA staffing fell 14.3% to 4,823 full-time employees.

• Also on May 7th, a federal jury convicted Sohaib Akhter of Alexandria, Virginia, on charges of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, password trafficking, and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. Akhter and his twin brother worked for a company that provided software and services to more than 45 federal agencies, including case management and FOIA database software. The brothers sought to harm their employer and its government customers by accessing computers without authorization and deleting approximately 96 FOIA and other government databases.

• Former President Biden sued the Justice Department on May 27th to block release of audio recordings and transcripts from his 2017 interviews with his memoir ghostwriter, which the Heritage Foundation had sought under FOIA. Biden's filing argued that the DOJ was abandoning "core tenets of American justice" by disclosing his "private information." The dispute connects to FOIA litigation the Heritage Foundation filed in 2024 seeking materials from Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents.

June events

June 1: Deadline for nominations for 2026-2028 FOIA Advisory Committee

June 3: DOJ/OIP, Exemption 1 and Exemption 7 Training

June 11: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting.

June 17: DOJ/OIP, Exemption 4 and Exemption 5 Training

Court opinion issued May 29, 2026

Org. of Am. Historians v. OMB (D.D.C.) -- denying motion to compel federal agencies to fast-track and produce FOIA records within 30 days about the administration's efforts to reshape how American history is presented at national parks and museums, because plaintiffs could not point to a specific upcoming event after which the records would no longer be useful—a requirement the court warned must be strictly enforced to avoid "an open season for FOIA preliminary injunctions"—and because jumping the line ahead of other FOIA requesters would be unfair when the normal process was already available to them.

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

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Take Five

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, GS 11, Tucson, AZ, closes 6/1/26 (internal only).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, GS 11-12, White City, OR, closes 6/3/26 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Def. Nuclear Facilities Safety Bd., GS 13-14, Wash., DC, closes 6/5/26 (non-public).

Att’y-Adviser, Dep’t of Justice/OIP, GS 12-15, Wash., DC, closes 6/5/26 (public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Justice/OIP, GS 14, Wash., DC, closes 6/10/26 (non-public).

And enjoy the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five” jazz standard.

Court opinions issued May 26, 2026

Bal v. U.S. Dep't of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (2nd Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming dismissal of FOIA claims against individual agency employees and dismissal of claim for damages; also affirming dismissal as moot of claim seeking to compel response to pending FOIA request where agency produced the requested records during litigation; and further affirming summary judgment for agency on redaction-related claims.

Res Ipsa Media, LLC v. DOJ (D. Md.) -- denying plaintiff's motion to compel Answer where DOJ filed motion to dismiss, or in in the alternative for summary judgment, arguing that a memo allegedly summarizing remarks by Chief Judge Boasberg at a Judicial Conference meeting was not an "agency record" subject to FOIA; declining to recharacterize DOJ's Rule 12(b)(1) motion as a Rule 56 motion solely to trigger answer deadline, finding DOJ's jurisdictional argument was not “patently frivolous.”

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

FOIA News: Biden sues DOJ to prevent release of his interviews

Why Biden Is Suing the DOJ—and What Trump Has Said About It

Tiago Ventura, TIME, May 27, 2026

ormer President Joe Biden is suing the Justice Department in an attempt to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts from private interviews with the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.

The lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.'s federal court Tuesday argues that the DOJ is abandoning “core tenets of American justice” by disclosing what Biden’s legal team describes as the former President’s "private information."

According to the filing, the DOJ informed Biden that it plans to release the materials on June 15 to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, which sued for access to the records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOAI) in 2024.

The foundation sought access to materials used in then-Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents when he served as Vice President between 2009-2017.

Read more here.

FOIA News: It's the final countdown

Final FOIA Advisory Committee Meetings of the 2024-2026 Term

NARA/OGIS, FOIA Ombudsman, May 26, 2026

The final two meetings of the 2024-2026 term of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee are on Thursday, June 11, 2026, and Thursday, July 16, 2026, beginning at 10 a.m. ET. The purpose of the virtual meetings will be to hear reports from and discuss recommendations from each of the three subcommittees: Statutory Reform, Volume and Frequency, and Implementation, as well as vote on the final report and recommendations from the Committee. All meeting materials will be posted on the FOIA Advisory Committee website here (June meeting) and here (July meeting).

Read more here.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: The DMV hat trick

Att’y-Advisor, Nat’l Labor Relations Bd., GS 12, Wash. DC, closes 5/27/26 (public).

Gov’t Info Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GG 12, Fort Meade, MD, closes 5/27.26 (non-public).

Sup. Att’y Advisor, Dep’t of Justice/EOIR, GS 15, Falls Church, VA, closes 6/2/26 (public).

Court opinions issued May 21, 2026

Heritage Found. v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- granting in part and denying in part former President Biden's motion to intervene in FOIA suit seeking Special Counsel recordings and transcripts of conversations between Biden and his ghostwriter/biographer, where DOJ abandoned its prior position opposing disclosure and left no party to adequately represent Biden’s privacy interests; granting intervention to oppose production of the materials to plaintiffs, but denying intervention as to cross-claims challenging a separate planned disclosure to the House Judiciary Committee on grounds that an intervenor may not inject issues not already before the court by another party.

Stevens v. HHS (N.D. Ill.) -- denying cross-motions for summary judgment on adequacy of search where HHS's declarations were insufficiently detailed to allow meaningful review of its searches for position announcements, work product, and travel records related to a former HHS employee now serving in Congress, and where CBP's search of tens of millions of documents had been narrowed to only 5,766 pages using a single search term without applying plaintiff's proposed narrowing parameters; ordering CBP to apply specified search terms to documents under 100 pages from 2019 only across multiple offices, while reserving for trial disputes over the adequacy of searches in various offices, CBP's withholdings, and whether the narrowed search would still be unduly burdensome.

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

FOIA News: Beach holiday reading

A new study looks at how AI tools change the way people request public records. The researchers found that while AI helps write requests faster, it also creates major challenges for the agencies processing them. Read the seven-page paper here.

Job, jobs, jobs: Come fly with me, let's fly away

Att’y-Adviser, Nat’l Labor Relations Bd., GS 12, Wash., DC, closes 5/26/26 (public).

Mgmt. & Program Analyst, Dep’t of Transp./FAA, FG 13, Ft. Worth, TX, closes 6/9/26 (internal only).

[Bonus track from Frank Sinatra]