Court opinions issued Dec. 17, 2021

Niskanen Ctr. v. FERC (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that agency properly invoked Exemption 6 to withhold the full names and addresses of property owners along the route of a proposed pipeline and that only the property owners’ initials and street names could be released.

Pub. Emps. for Envtl. Responsibility v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- finding that DHS properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold records pertaining to Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 2015 Strategic National Risk Assessment and that the agency met its statutory burden to show foreseeable harm.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 16, 2021

Picardi v. U.S. Attorney's Offices (D.S.D.) -- determining that Executive Office for U.S. Attorney’s Office performed reasonable search for records concerning plaintiff’s criminal and civil tax trials in South Dakota, and that it properly withheld grand jury material pursuant to Exemption 3 and third party information pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C).

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinions issued Dec. 13, 2021

WP Co, v. SBA (D.D.C.) -- following multiple rounds of summary judgment motions, ruling that: (1) SBA properly relied on Exemption 4 to withhold loan status information of Paycheck Protection Program recipients, noting that SBA had asked loan recipients about their customary treatment of such information and established that disclosure would meet foreseeable harm standard; and (2) SBA properly withheld employer identification numbers of businesses under Exemption 6, because agency could not reasonably segregate them from social security numbers of individual borrowers.

Villanueva v. DOJ (S.D. Fla.) -- ordering FBI to process 20,500 pages of withheld documents responsive to plaintiff’s June 2018 FOIA request at a rate of 5,125 pages per month, rejecting government’s proposed rate of 500 pages per month.

Keeping Gov't Beholden. v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- finding that: (1) two of plaintiff’s requests to FBI did not reasonably describe the records sought because those records could not be located with a reasonable amount of effort; and (2) FBI properly invoked Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold certain emails of former FBI Director and met statute’s foreseeable harm provision under standards set forth by D.C. Circuit.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 10, 2021

Judicial Watch v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- reversing district court’s decision that DOJ properly withheld working draft statements of then-Attorney General Sally Yates under Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege and holding that agency’s declaration neglected to address “the ‘who,’ i.e., the roles of the document drafters and recipients and their places in the chain of command; the ‘what,’ i.e., the nature of the withheld content; the ‘where,’ i.e., the stage within the broader deliberative process in which the withheld material operates; and the ‘how,’ i.e., the way in which the withheld material facilitated agency deliberation.”

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinions issued Dec. 9, 2021

Stevens v. U.S. Dep’t of State (7th Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that the agency performed adequate search for records concerning foreign campuses of American universities and that it properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 1, 3, and 5 (deliberative process privilege).

Matthews v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- following government’s multiple motions for summary judgment concerning plaintiff’s request for records about himself, deciding that: (1) FBI properly redacted identities of agency support personnel pursuant to Exemption 6; (2) agency did not provide sufficient information for court to determine that Exemptions 6 and 7(C) supported withholding of names and phone numbers of certain employees, as well as victim impact statements associated with plaintiff’s criminal prosecution; and (3) FBI justified its withholding of information about an informant under Exemption 7(D).

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinions issued Dec. 8, 2021

AquAlliance v. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (D.D.C.) -- ruling that agency performed adequate search for summaries of certain 2020 water transfers; rejecting plaintiff’s argument that agency was also required to search for underlying data, because plaintiff expressly limited its request to summaries.

W. Watersheds Project v. Nat'l Park Serv. (D. Idaho) -- granting government’s motion to change venue to Utah notwithstanding plaintiff’s principal place of business in Idaho, because case primarily involves plaintiff’s FOIA requests for documents located in Utah and how agency employees in Utah responded to those requests.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 7, 2021

Pickering v. DOJ (W.D.N.Y.) -- concluding that FBI performed reasonable search for records pertaining to convicted murderer Leonard Peltier and properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 3, 5 (attorney work-product), 6, 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E).

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 3, 2021

Surgey v. EPA (D.D.C.) -- determining that: (1) EPA likely performed reasonable search for records concerning former Administrator’s trip to 2018 Rose Bowl game, but neglected to invoke the “magic words” that it searched all locations likely to contain responsive records; (2) EPA properly relied on Exemption 6 to withhold records about the former Administrator’s family vacation, and reserving judgment as to whether the agency properly withheld records concerning security personnel’s travel and logistical coordination under Exemptions 7(E) and 7(F).

Elec. Privacy Info. Serv. v. IRS (D.D.C.) -- ruling that the IRS improperly relied on Exemption 3 to withhold tax settlement agreements between the agency and Donald Trump and businesses associated with him, and that plaintiff was precluded from accessing copies of tax returns pursuant to the same exemption.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinion issued Nov. 30, 2021

Elec. Privacy Info. Ctr. v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that DOJ properly invoked Exemption 7(C) to redact the identities of third parties investigated but not charged by Special Counsel Mueller, except with respect to “the information relating to individuals investigated for campaign violations, as the factual circumstances surrounding this portion of the investigation are already publicly available in the unredacted portions” of Muller’s report.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.

Court opinions issued Nov. 29, 2021

Nat. Res. Def. Council v. EPA (2nd Cir.) -- reversing in part and vacating in part district court’s decision and holding that: (1) “messaging documents”— i.e., records relating to agency’s decision about how to communicate its policies to people outside the agency—merit protection under Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege unless they reflect “merely descriptive discussions”; and (2) “briefing documents”—i.e., records “created to brief senior agency staff about various topics”—could qualify under the deliberative process privilege even if they did not relate to a specific decision facing the agency.”

Bolze v. EOUSA (D.D.C.) -- granting summary judgment to government after determining that EOUSA and FBI performed adequate searches for records concerning plaintiff and that plaintiff declined to challenge any withholdings.

Brennan Ctr. for Justice v. ICE (S.D.N.Y.) -- deciding that ICE did not perform adequate search for certain handbooks and training material and that agency properly withheld some portions, but not all, of its National Security Investigation Handbook pursuant to Exemption 7(E).

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.