Mar. 19, 2025
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. U.S. DOGE Serv. (D.D.C.) — denying the government’s motion for reconsideration of a prior preliminary-injunction ruling that held U.S. DOGE Service was likely an “agency” for FOIA purposes, in large part, because the government’s “arguments could all have been raised during the last round of briefing” and “none of them provides a basis for reconsideration”; acknowledging, nonetheless, that “it would be preferable . . . to review the question of whether [DOGE] is subject to the FOIA on the merits based on a more complete record,” and therefore inviting the requester to file a motion for limited discovery under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d); expressing doubt that the irreparable-harm analysis underlying the Court’s preliminary injunction ruling was erroneous; continuing to point to public statements by President Trump and Elon Musk, as well as press reports, that cast doubt on the government’s various factual claims. [RPM: FOIA Advisor previously reported on this decision when it first issued.]
U.S. Right to Know v. Dep’t of Def. (N.D. Cal.) — granting in party and denying in part the plaintiff’s motion for attorney’s fees; noting the government did “not contest that Plaintiff is eligible to receive an award of fees and costs”; on the question of entitlement, concluding that: (1) the public interest favors the award, as the records, which pertain to COVID-19, could help reveal “‘possible politicization of agency decisionmaking’”; (2) the plaintiff, as a non-profit organization, had no commercial interest in the responsive records; and (3) the agency acted unreasonably by failing to comply with statutory deadlines, or to communicate with the plaintiff “for over two years until after suit was commenced,” and by significantly over-redacting the responsive records in the first instance without any “colorable basis under the law”; ultimately awarding “$74,312.88 in attorneys fees and $688.96 in costs,” or roughly $10,000 less than what plaintiff asked for, after rejecting recovery for: (1) certain administrative tasks, like fixing access problems to USAfx or other “purely clerical tasks,” (2) internal attorney communications that were vaguely described in the ’ fee motion and supporting declarations, (3) pro hac vice fees, and (4) costs related to “expert declarations.”
Mar. 20, 2025
Simmons v. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) — denying an aggrieved, former State Department employee’s motion for attorney fees in light of her failure to demonstrate under the “catalyst theory” how she “substantially prevailed,” and was therefore eligible for fee recovery; specifically, noting the requester failed to show “this litigation caused [the agency] to comply with her FOIA and Privacy Act requests”; noting also the agency had “immediately started processing records and made several pre-litigation productions”; relatedly concluding the requester “fail[ed] to rebuff evidence that [any] delayed ‘disclosure result[ed] not from the suit but from delayed administrative processing.’”
Leopold v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — on remand from the D.C. Circuit for a “third round of summary judgment,” denying the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment regarding withholding under Exemption 8 of a redacted version of an independent monitor’s report detailing HSBC’s compliance with a deferred prosecution agreement, specifically with respect to the justification for continued non-disclosure under the foreseeable-harm standard; ruling that, while “Exemption 8’s broader protections . . . related to financial institutions apply,” in camera review of the monitor report is needed to resolve the case; noting, inter alia, that another judge “found not harm in disclosing a redacted version,” and that DOJ’s own filings suggest “portions of the . . . [r]eport might be . . . released with minimal risk of harm.”
Crandell v. Nat’l Archives & Records Admin. (4th Cir.) (unpublished) — affirming dismissal of FOIA lawsuit, where the requester failed to exhaust administrative remedies and failed also to demonstrate that the records he had requested “still existed”; modifying the district court’s ruling, however, by ordering the dismissal to be without prejudice.
Mar. 21, 2025
Wiggins v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — granting in part and denying in part the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that the agency conducted an adequate search where it explained the custodial locations searched and the search terms utilized; noting that plaintiff proffered no “evidence” to support its “assertion of missing records”; holding also that the agency failed to offer adequate explanation for its use of Exemption 5 to withhold “undated and unsigned proposed amended jury instructions,” as well as other “unsigned” and either “undated” or “partially dated” litigation documents, including e-mail records between DOJ personnel “regarding the prosecution of plaintiff and the co-defendant’s criminal cases”; explaining that “EOUSA’s cryptic description” for the various “document[s] or categor[ies] of documents” does not establish their deliberative nature; noting also the agency’s “generic assertions of harm to internal discussions . . . parroted throughout the Vaugh index”; with respect to Exemption 7(C), holding that the agency properly redacted “the names and other identifying information of third-party individuals, including Eastern District employees, third-party witnesses, and co-defendants”; finally, concluding that “EOUSA has not properly justified withholding fifty-one sealed pages,” as it “offered no evidence”; directing the government to “supplement the record” and, if appropriate after re-processing, to “move again for dispositive relief.”
Ctr. for Medical Progress v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion for summary judgment and denying the plaintiff’s cross-motion; holding, firstly, that the agency “properly determined the scope of the plaintiff’s FOIA request,” which sought a “specific set of documents” about “grant applications,” especially in light of the plaintiff’s oral and written clarifications upon request from the agency, as well as its agreement to narrow its request post-submission; holding further that the agency conducted an adequate search; noting that “[b]eyond the contract records” that were properly beyond the scope of the request, “the plaintiff provide[d] no further basis to challenge the good faith basis” afforded to the agency’s supporting declarations.
Am. Property Locators, Inc. v. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C.) — in a case involving a commercial-use FOIA request for records about stale checks from CPB, granting the agency’s motion to dismiss and approving its inclusion in a fee estimate of expenses related to carrying out the “business submitter process”; explaining that CBP maintains a special process for notifying “submitters” of “commercial information” so that they can object to disclosure of their information under the FOIA, and that the agency has treated “Limited Payability (stale dated check) records” as triggering this “process”; declining to adopt the government’s recommendation to either apply arbitrary-and-capricious review or Auer deference in lieu of the FOIA’s default de novo review standard; holding that CPB provided a “‘reasonable, non-obstructionist explanation’ . . . for applying the business submitter process” based on its published regulations, and that it appropriately assumed responsive records would “encompass emails between CBP and business submitters regarding the original commercial transaction, the status of payee checks, the occurrence of novel financial transactions, and/or bank account information”; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that any possible exceptions to the business-submitter process applied; noting the “process itself is reasonable” as it “‘give[s] effect to Exemption 4,” among other things; finding no basis in the record to doubt the actual fee estimate of $738; finally, concluding that the requester failed to exhaust by “pay[ing] the required fees before suing the challenge the substance of [its] FOIA request.”
Rhodes v. Internal Revenue Serv. (N.D. Ala.) — granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative remedies; rejecting the requester’s apparent argument, based on the language of his complaint, that “there were no administrative remedies to be exhausted”; rejecting also the requester’s suggestion that the IRS’s determination letter was “insufficient to trigger a duty to exhaust his claims” because it “did not communicate the scope of the documents it withheld” by including a “privilege log.”
Jackson v. Internal Revenue Serv. (N.D. Ala.) — in an almost word-for-word, identical opinion to that published above in Rhodes, granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.
Cahill v. Dep’t of Commerce (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s motion to dismiss for mootness where a pro se requester admitted the agency “finally complied” with his request prior to filing suit; denying also the requester’s motion for costs because the “Department turned over the video [at issue] without a court order, written agreement, or consent decree,” the record was “outside the scope of [the requester’s] FOIA request,” and “the Department would have been able to meritoriously defend its denial of . . . [the] request by arguing that [the requester] had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies.”
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — in a case seeking access to records related to the “now-closed criminal investigation of former Congressman Matt Gaetz,” in which the requester also pleaded policy-and-practice claims related to the use of Glomar responses and categorical withholdings under Exemptions 6 and 7(C), granting in party and denying in part the government’s motion to dismiss; with respect to allegations about an unlawful Glomar-response policy, holding that CREW can appropriately “aggregate” evidence about the behavior of multiple “components within a larger agency” to sustain its claim; noting, in that respect, how “CREW has identified six instances of potentially violative conduct across four DOJ components,” that this “is numerically sufficient to show a pattern for purposes of a motion to dismiss,” that there is sufficient relation between the examples to suggest a “consistent policy,” and that CREW has otherwise “plead sufficient facts to suggest” the ostensible policy is unlawful; holding also, by contrast, that CREW’s policy-or-practice claim about Exemption 6/7(C) responses must be dismissed because DOJ’s “responses to CREW’s three requests were not uniform,” and therefore undercut any theory that they did not reflect “case-by-case analysis.”
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.