Sherven v. CIA (W.D. Wis.) — granting the CIA’s motion for summary judgment in a case brought by a pro se requester for records about himself; holding that the agency properly refused to search for records responsive to several items of the request on grounds that responsive records, if they existed, would be exempt under Exemptions 1 and 3; noting that, while “[t]he CIA could have been more specific in its explanation,” “[c]ourts must defer to agencies on issues of national security”; declining to conduct in camera review because, in a searchless Glomar case, that would require the agency to actually “confirm that there are responsive documents.”

Howell v. DHS (D.D.C.) — denying plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction requiring expedited disclosure of communications between Vice President Harris and Customs & Border Protection related to the “southwest border or illegal immigration”; holding that the “Plaintiffs fall far short of a preliminary injunction’s high bar,” are “unlikely to succeed on the merits,” “failed to exhaust FOIA administrative processes” by failing to respond at the outset to DHS’s request for clarification, and anyway “advance dubious claims of irreparable harm and the public interest”; elaborating that “the Court will not compel DHS to prioritize Plaintiffs’ vague, noncompliant request above the 125,000 FOIA requests in its backlog, or even the smaller number of cases in its expedited processing queue,” particularly since “Plaintiffs have already successfully sought information about the issue they claim is now so urgent, and their premature attempt to return to this Court with a highly similar request borders on the vexatious.”

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.