Court opinions issued Sept. 2, 2022

Kowal v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- on third round of summary judgment, concluding that DEA properly relied on Exemption 7(E) to withhold portions of DEA’s Agents’ Manual.

Ctr. for Medical Progress v. HHS (D.D.C.) -- determining that: (1) agency properly invoked Exemption 4 to withhold five categories of disputed records pertaining to University of Pittsburgh’s fetal tissue-related grant application to NIH, and agency sufficiently demonstrated that disclosure would cause foreseeable harm; and (2) agency properly withheld records identifying university’s employees, third-party supporters, and clients pursuant to Exemption 6 due to potential violence and harassment.

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

Court opinions issued Sept. 1, 2022

Munene v. Talebian (W.D. Wash.) -- denying award of attorneys’ fees and costs after concluding that plaintiffs failed to establish that lawsuit had “a substantial causative effect on EOIR's release of the requested documents.”

Buzzfeed Inc. v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- finding that ICE again failed to justify use of Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to redact two documents pertaining to alien “Risk Classification Assessments,” and granting ICE’s renewed summary judgment motion regarding searches and withholdings not in dispute.

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

Court opinion issued Aug. 31, 2022

Dale v. DEA (D.D.C.) -- finding that agency performed adequate search for various records concerning plaintiff’s criminal case and that it properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 3, 7(C), 7(D), 7(E), and 7(F), which plaintiff did not dispute.

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

Court opinion issued August 29, 2022

Wine v. U.S. Dep’t of the Interior (D.D.C.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s FOIA claim because he failed to administratively appeal from agency’s decision to partially redact email about law enforcement’s entry onto plaintiff’s property.

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

Court opinion issued Aug. 25, 2022

Kendrick v. DEA (D.D.C.) -- concluding that agency did not adequately describe how it searched for certain records concerning plaintiff, who was sentenced to “life imprisonment plus 30 years” for his involvement in a “drug ring,” and that agency properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 7(C) and 7(E).

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

FOIA News: DOJ gives up FOIA fight, releases advisory memo re: Trump

Justice Department releases Mueller-era memo on Trump prosecution

Two top aides to then-Attorney General William Barr said Trump’s acts wouldn’t have merited obstruction charges even if he were not immune as president.

By Josh Gerstein & Kyle Cheney, Politico, Aug. 24, 2022

The Justice Department has released a long-sought legal memo arguing that then-President Donald Trump’s actions during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation did not warrant prosecution for obstruction of justice, even if a president was susceptible to criminal charges while in office.

In the nine-page memo disclosed Wednesday, two of the most senior officials in the Justice Department advised then-Attorney General William Barr that Trump’s threats to fire Mueller and his various public and private outbursts against witnesses he viewed as hostile or unhelpful to him didn’t amount to the sort of case prosecutors would bring under their established standards.

Read more here.

Court opinion issued Aug. 23, 2022

Scoville v. U.S. Dep’t of State (E.D. Wis.) -- ruling that plaintiff’s Complaint alleged sufficient facts to state plausible “policy and practice” claim, noting that agency allegedly failed to comply with plaintiff’s FOIA requests on six occasions from 2014 to 2021.

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

Court opinions issued Aug. 19, 2022

Transgender Law Ctr. v. ICE (9th Cir.) -- holding that: (1) agencies must prove adequacy of search “beyond material doubt” and that district court erred in finding that DHS adequately searched or records pertaining to asylum-seeker’s death from HIV in federal custody; (2) district court should not have “essentially treated all drafts as necessarily covered by the deliberative process privilege”; (3) district court erred in permitting government to withhold email domain addresses under Exemptions 6 and 7(C); (4) government’s use of Exemption 7(E) was overbroad and district court neglected to analyze whether withheld records were techniques and procedures, and not guidelines; and (5) district court failed to ensure that government’s Vaughn Index entries were non-conclusory, that government explained why documents were not segregable, and that government properly designated certain documents as non-responsive or duplicates.

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash v. DOJ (D.C. Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that DOJ failed to adequately explain how agency memorandum to Attorney General Barr concerning Mueller Report fell within Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege; declining to decide whether “a purely hypothetical, academic discussion among agency personnel could qualify under the . . . privilege”; refusing to allow DOJ to present a new argument that memorandum was drafted “for the purpose of determining the content of a possible public statement regarding the report.”

Asian Am. Advancing Justice v. DHS (N.D. Cal.) -- determining that Immigration and Customs Enforcement properly relied to on Exemption 7(E) to redact memorandum of understanding concerning Vietnam’s acceptance of certain Vietnamese citizens.

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

Court opinion issued Aug. 17, 2022

Occupational Safety & Health Law Proj. v. DOL (D.D.C.) -- in case involving request for company’s settlement agreement, ruling the government met its burden for the "commercial" and "obtained from a person" requirements of Exemption 4, but that had not carried burden as to the confidentiality prong of Exemption 4, foreseeable harm, or segregability.

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

Court opinion issued Aug. 16, 2022

Am. Oversight v. DOJ (2nd Cir.) -- affirming district court’s decision that FBI properly relied on Exemption 5’s attorney work-product privilege to withhold records generated from interviews of targets or subjects related to investigation of persons associated with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign; rejecting appellant’s flawed reasoning that “an attorney can waive protection for work-product documents even before the documents exist.”

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