Bader Family Found. v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ. (D.D.C.) -- deciding that: (1) agency failed to conduct adequate search for emails concerning school disciplinary policies by neglecting to use reasonable search terms and not searching a non-government email account to which responsive emails had been sent; and (2) agency properly relied on Exemption 6 to redact cell phone number and non-government email address.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Leopold v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- holding that Exemption 8 protected in full an independent monitor’s 1,000-page compliance report concerning HSBC and that no non-exempt information could be reasonably segregated and released, including “background information or a table of contents.”
Kuzma v. DOJ (W.D.N.Y.) -- (1) adopting magistrate judge’s report and recommendation that FBI performed adequate search and properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 7(D) and 7(E); (2) rejecting magistrate’s finding that FBI improperly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) and ruling that FBI made reasonable effort to ascertain whether individuals whose names were withheld were still alive; and (3) rejecting magistrate’s conclusion that plaintiff’s entitlement to attorney’s fees was limited to the timeframe in which the Complaint was filed through FBI’s first release of records.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Ctr. for Immigration Studies v. USCIS (D.D.C.) -- holding that plaintiff’s request seeking all emails sent and received by three senior officials over a nine-month period —a total of 1.6 million pages—was unduly burdensome and need not be processed.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Franklin v. United States (5th Cir.) -- in relevant part, deciding that district court did not abuse its discretion in denying plaintiff attorneys’ fees because “the public gains no benefit” from disclosure of records concerning plaintiff’s tax penalties.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Hooker v. U.S. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs (D.D.C.) -- dismissing case brought by former Department employee and vexatious litigator after finding that Department performed reasonable search for requested document, which was ultimately produced after plaintiff filed suit.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Codrea v. ATF (D.D.C.) -- concluding that ATF properly relied on Exemption 7(C) in refusing to confirm or deny existence of agency’s involvement in alleged 2018 gun incident involving Hunter Biden; finding that public interest in agency’s handling of this matter was “significant,” but that it was outweighed by subject’s “remarkably strong” privacy interest.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Ecological Rights Found. v. Envtl. Prot. Agency (D.D.C.) — in a challenge to the EPA’s 2019 direct final rule implementing various changes to the agency’s FOIA regulations, (1) granting the government’s motion to dismiss several claims on various grounds (lack of standing, failure to state a claim, redressability, and/or statute of limitations)—namely, two substantive claims challenging provisions requiring submission of all requests to the EPA’s National FOIA Office and authorizing the Administrator to issue final determinations, as well as a procedural claim alleging failure to promulgate the rule through notice-and-comment rulemaking; (2) remanding the remaining claim without vacatur to permit the EPA to revise a portion of the rule authorizing the withholding of a “portion of a record on the basis of responsiveness.”
Cause of Action Inst. v. Dep’t of Commerce (D.D.C.) — ruling that: (1) requester had standing to bring policy-and-practice challenge to agency’s allegedly unlawful withholding of Section 232 secretarial reports under Exemption 5, in conjunction with the presidential-communications and deliberative-process privileges, until such time as the President directs disclosure; (2) the same policy-and-practice claim was ripe for review because it required neither “speculation about future application” nor consideration of “the facts of a particular case”; and (3) the claim fails on the merits because secretarial reports required under 19 U.S.C. § 1862(b)—or at least the underlying report requested by the plaintiff—falls “squarely within [the presidential-communications] privilege” as “a confidential report from a Cabinet Secretary to the President, created to advise him on matters of national security and ‘made in the process of shaping policies and making decisions.’”
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Wash. Post v. DOD (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) government could not use Exemption 6 to categorically withhold names of retired, non-Senate confirmed service members who applied to work for foreign governments; (2) government was required to disclose income and security clearance information of retired, Senate-confirmed foreign employment applicants that had been withheld under Exemption 6; (3) Air Force properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to withhold name of military officer alleged to have violated federal law; (4) Departments of the Army and the Navy improperly relied on attorney-client privilege to withhold portions of memoranda containing facts provided by non-agency personnel, and they failed to reasonably segregable factual materials withheld under the deliberative process privilege.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Smith v. DOJ (M.D. Fla.) -- finding that: (1) FBI performed adequate searches for all but one of 14 items pertaining to a third party’s prosecution for production and possession of child pornography; (2) FBI properly withheld some, but not all, responsive records pursuant to Exemption 7(A), and FBI’s declaration discussing agency’s concurrent reliance on underlying exemptions was too general to warrant summary judgment.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.
Advancement Proj. v. DHS (D.D.C.) -- deciding that: (1) ICE properly invoked Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold records pertaining to visa sanctions, but it failed to properly explain its segregability analysis; and (2) State Department properly withheld records on same subject pursuant to Exemption 7(E) and Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege.
Judicial Watch v. U.S. Dep’t of State (D.D.C.) -- ruling that agency did not entirely justify its search for records concerning former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power’s requests to “unmask” the identity of former National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Michael Flynn in intelligence reports.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.