Nat’l Student Legal Def. Net. v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ. (D.D.C.) -- ruling that Department of Education performed adequate search for certain federal student aid-related records received from the Social Security Administration, notwithstanding department’s failure to locate two additional SSA records that the department was required by regulation to request from SSA annually.
100Reporters v. U.S. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — finding that: (1) Department failed to adequately search for reports to Congress concerning vetting of foreign security personnel; (2) Department properly withheld some, but not all, vetting records pursuant to Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege and noting that agencies are not required to trace lineage of each draft document to ensure that it has not been adopted as agency’s final position; (3) Department failed to provide sufficient evidence to show that names of foreign security officials were protected under Exemptions 6 or 7(C); (4) Department properly withheld most, but not all, records pursuant to Exemption 7(E); and (5) Department failed to identify any authority that would authorize Court to order plaintiffs to return inadvertently released records, regardless of whether those records are protected under various exemptions, including Exemption 7(F).
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.