FOIA Advisor

View Original

Court opinions issued August 12, 2015

Detroit Free Press v. U.S. Dep't of Justice (6th Cir.) -- Noting that it was bound by its 1996 decision, the Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit affirmed that U.S. Marshals Service must release booking photographs of Detroit-area police officers indicted on federal charges.  The court, however, urged the full panel of the Sixth Circuit to reconsider the issue of whether Exemption 7(C) applied to such records in light of contrary decisions in other circuits.

Leopold v. Dep't of Justice (D.D.C.) -- ruling that DOJ's search for certain records concerning drones was inadequate because it interpreted the term "Obama administration" to include EOP employees only and failed to consider certain high-level cabinet officials; further ruling that agency properly invoked Exemption 3 to withhold portions of a "White Paper," and that all but a few Exemption 1 redactions to the same document also were proper.

Summaries of all cases since April 2015 are available here.