Transgender Law Ctr. v. ICE (9th Cir.) -- holding that: (1) agencies must prove adequacy of search “beyond material doubt” and that district court erred in finding that DHS adequately searched or records pertaining to asylum-seeker’s death from HIV in federal custody; (2) district court should not have “essentially treated all drafts as necessarily covered by the deliberative process privilege”; (3) district court erred in permitting government to withhold email domain addresses under Exemptions 6 and 7(C); (4) government’s use of Exemption 7(E) was overbroad and district court neglected to analyze whether withheld records were techniques and procedures, and not guidelines; and (5) district court failed to ensure that government’s Vaughn Index entries were non-conclusory, that government explained why documents were not segregable, and that government properly designated certain documents as non-responsive or duplicates.
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that DOJ failed to adequately explain how agency memorandum to Attorney General Barr concerning Mueller Report fell within Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege; declining to decide whether “a purely hypothetical, academic discussion among agency personnel could qualify under the . . . privilege”; refusing to allow DOJ to present a new argument that memorandum was drafted “for the purpose of determining the content of a possible public statement regarding the report.”
Asian Am. Advancing Justice v. DHS (N.D. Cal.) -- determining that Immigration and Customs Enforcement properly relied to on Exemption 7(E) to redact memorandum of understanding concerning Vietnam’s acceptance of certain Vietnamese citizens.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.