Am. Oversight v. HHS (D.C. Cir.) -- reversing the district court’s decision granting judgment to the government and ruling: (1) in a unanimous opinion, that HHS failed to perform an adequate search for records concerning healthcare reform because it omitted “obvious alternative terms,” such as the unabbreviated names of the ACA and AHCA statutes, “without a detailed explanation”; and (2) in a 2-1 opinion, that communications between agencies and Congress (or their staffs) did not fall within the Exemption 5’s consultant corollary doctrine, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Klamath, because “each side had an independent stake in the potential healthcare reform legislation under discussion”; the dissent contended that FOIA’s “text, purpose, structure, and legislative history” supported withholding under Exemption 5, notwithstanding Klamath, and that “the ramifications of the majority’s contrary interpretation of FOIA are actually quite breathtaking.”
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