Court opinion issued Dec. 16, 2024

Inst. For Energy Research v. Dep't of the Treasury (D.D.C.) -- deciding that plaintiff was ineligible for attorney’s fees in connection with its requests for correspondence concerning the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022; reasoning that “the record demonstrates that IRS initiated its search and review process before any action was filed, IER cannot prove that its litigation catalyzed the agency's response.”

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

Court opinion issued Dec. 13, 2024

Found. for Gov’t Accountability v. DOJ (M.D. Fla.) --granting DOJ’s renewed summary motion following in camera inspection of three documents pertaining to Executive Order 14019; finding that: (1) DOJ properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold “a compilation of fragmented notes” of a DOJ employee memorializing a listening session in which voting rights advocates shared ideas and strategies with the White House and executive branch officials; and (2) DOJ properly relied on Exemption 5’s presidential communications privilege to withhold its strategic plan and rejecting plaintiff’s arguments that: (a) disclosure of fact sheet and strategic plans by other agencies waived the privilege for DOJ; (b) that the President was required to personally invoke the privilege; and (c) that the strategic plan reflected only DOJ decision-making, not presidential decision-making; further finding that DOJ’s strategic plan was treated as a confidential document and that DOJ sufficiently identified multiple foreseeable harms.

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

Court opinion issued Dec. 9, 2024

Bal v. U.S. Dep't of the Treasury (S.D.N.Y.) -- finding that: (1) Treasury performed adequate search for records pertaining to blockage of pro se plaintiff’s $400 PayPal payment to a third party to rent an apartment in Cuba; (2) Treasury properly relied on Exemption 4 to withhold specific details about transaction at issue, noting that both Treasury and PayPal “keep this information confidential in order to prevent others from future sanctions evasions”; and (3) Treasury properly relied on Exemption 6 to redact a telephone number and names of PayPal employees who were involved in the blocking of plaintiff’s funds.

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

Court opinions issued Dec. 6, 2024

Pub. Health & Med, Professionals for Transparency v. FDA (N.D. Tex.) -- denying FDA’s summary judgment motion after concluding that the agency’s search for records pertaining to Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine improperly omitted the agency’s Emergency Use Authorization file.

Intercept Media v. Nat’l Parks Serv. (S.D.N.Y.) -- determining that: (1) agency’s investigation into whether an employee wrongfully killed a gray wolf qualified as “law enforcement” for Exemption 7 purposes, because the results of the investigation could have resulted in criminal liability; (2)(a) subject of investigation had no privacy interest in the details about the incident he disclosed to the media; (b) despite subject’s low rank, public interest in disclosure outweighed subject’s limited privacy interest in non-public investigatory details; (3) agency properly withheld identifying information about third parties, such as the complainant, witnesses, suspected co-conspirators, and other third parties, pursuant to Exemption 7(C); and (4) based on court’s in camera review of disputed records, agency was required to segregate and disclose non-identifying information pertaining to third parties.

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

Court opinions issued Dec. 2, 2024

Berlant v. U.S. Election Assistance Comm’n (D. Or.) -- determining that: (1) agency performed adequate search for various records pertaining to its accreditation of voting system test laboratories (VSTLs); (2) agency properly relied on Exemption 4 to withhold certain records submitted by VSTLs, because those entities customarily kept those records documents private; moreover, the agency provided express and implied assurances to VSTLs that such records would remain confidential; and (3) agency properly invoked Exemption 6 to withhold work phone numbers of two former employees, as well as contact and insurance information of third parties.

Am. First Legal Found. v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- in case involving spreadsheet of enforcement actions taken against certain non-citizens, ruling that: (1) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to withhold names of non-citizens, docket numbers, and full dates of birth, but that it had not justified the blanket withholding of birth months and years, residential addresses by city, state, and country, or gag, cartel, terrorist group affiliations, and monikers; rejecting plaintiff’s threshold argument that non-citizens have no privacy rights under FOIA, noting that plaintiff’s position was unsupported by the statute’s text and case law and would lead to absurd results; and (3) ICE properly invoked Exemption 7(E) to withhold precise addresses where at-large, non-citizens could be located, but it did not justify withholding city, state, and country data; further, ICE properly withheld operational details about its past and future attempts to locate non-citizens under Exemption 7(E), as well as “‘apprehension locations of non-citizens attempting to enter the U.S. illegally”; however, ICE fell short with respect to its Exemption 7(E) withholdings of the names of gang, cartel, and terrorist group affiliations, and monikers.

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

Court opinions issued Nov. 26, 2024

Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research. v. NIH (4th Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision after finding that: (1) agency’s failure to meet FOIA’s response deadline for issuing a final determination did not preclude summary judgment in agency’s favor or warrant any additional relief for appellant; (2) agency established with “sufficiently detailed” declarations that it performed adequate searches for records concerning the submission and withdrawal of sequencing data regarding the origin of COVID-19; (3) agency properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to redact draft Q&A in response to a foreign news article, as well as draft responses to a congressional inquiry; and (4) agency properly relied on Exemption 6 to redact contact information of NIH employees and the identity of a Wuhan University researcher, rejecting appellant’s “attenuated” argument that disclosure would promote the public’s knowledge about the origin of the pandemic.

Walker v. Donovan (D.D.C.) -- denying plaintiff’s motion for attorney’s fees stemming from request for Air Force’s investigatory records concerning plaintiff; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that the lawsuit was a catalyst for the release of records, in part because the Air Force began processing plaintiff’s request “well before [plaintiff] initiated his lawsuit”; accepting agency’s explanation that delays were due to “its other duties, including processing [plaintiff’s] FOIA appeal, ‘staffing issues and the press of other business in the Air Force Operations Agency FOIA office,’ . . . and significant telework constraints during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

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

Court opinion issued Nov. 21, 2024

Kinnucan v, NSA (W.D. Wash.) -- ruling that the National Security Agency properly withheld a U.S. House committee report related to a 1967 attack by Israeli forces on a U.S. naval intelligence ship, because the report was not an agency record; reasoning that that the facts and circumstances of the report’s creation and its transfer to NSA demonstrated that Congress “manifested a clear intent to maintain control over” the report, which was consistent with the test set forth by the D.C. Circuit in Am. Civil Liberties Union v. CIA, 823 F.3d 655, 662-63 (D.C. Cir. 2016).

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

Court opinions issued Nov. 20, 2024

Smartflash LLC v. USPTO (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s summary judgment motion and upholding its application of Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege to six emails concerning the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s use of “expanded panels”; concluding the communications at issue were pre-decisional and deliberative since they reflected “communications by subordinate employees . . . discussing how to interpret and respond to a prior FOIA request,” and contained “preliminary impressions, analysis, questions, and recommendations”; holding further that the agency conducted an adequate segregability review and demonstrate foreseeable harm in potential “chilling effect” on the FOIA office’s processing of requests; finally, rejecting the requester’s waiver arguments based on either adoption or public disclosure as unwarranted.

Informed Consent Action Network v. FDA (D.D.C) — granting, in part, the agency’s Open America stay motion; noting, among other things, how “FDA received two court orders [in the past three years] that together compelled it to produce approximately 5.7 million pages of COVID-19 vaccine records within a highly compressed timeframe,” and that these production orders have negatively impacted the processing of other requests; rejecting the agency’s proposal for an eighteen-month stay, and instead staying the case for eight months.

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

Court opinion issued Nov. 19, 2024

Gov’t Accountability & Oversight v. SEC (D.D.C.) — denying requester’s motion for fees after concluding that the requester was not eligible; rejecting the requester’s reliance on the “catalyst theory,” and instead determining that the agency persuasively explained how it had already started processing by the time the lawsuit was filed; concluding further that any “delay was not due to a lack of cooperation, but rather was the result of an email fluke that caused GAO’s FOIA requests to be marked as spam,” and that the agency’s decision to reprocess and release previously withheld portions of records was not compelled by any aspect of the litigation process.

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

Court opinion issued Nov. 12, 2024

Org. for Competitive Mkts. v. USDA-OIG (D.D.C.) — granting summary judgment in favor of the defendant agency and intervenor National Cattlemen’s Beef Association more than 4 1/2 years after briefing ended; holding, first, that USDA-OIG conducted an adequate search, despite the requester not challenging its sufficency; similarly entering judgment in favor of the agency vis-a-vis its use of Exemptions 7(C) and 7(C), despite no opposition from the requester; upholding the agency’s use of Exemption 6, in light of the requester’s abandoned arguments; ruling that the agency properly invoked Exemption 4 to withhold information concerning “Beef Checkoff Contractors” and “Qualified State Beef Councils” assuch information (e.g., “financial reports, accounting ledgers, budgets, and vendor contact information) was “generally treated as private by the owner of the records”; rejecting the requester’s arguments that an assurance of privacy is a “necessary condition” for withholding; ruling further that the agency properly invoked Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege to protect draft audit reports and audit-related communications, and rejecting the requester’s appeal to the “government misconduct exception”; finally, concluding that the agency conducted an adequate segregability review.

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