Court opinion issued Sept. 1, 2024

Stevens v. HHS (N.D. Ill.) -- on renewed summary judgment, holding that: (1) government was not required to file a motion under Rule 60(b) seeking relief from court’s prior summary judgment ruling because the court had not entered final judgment; (2)(a) the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s supplemental search for emails about third parties was inadequate because the agency failed to explain why it did not use the subjects’ A-numbers as search terms; and (b) EOIR unreasonably limited its search to a five-year period where plaintiff asked for decade’s worth of records and the agency’s record retention period is seven years; (3) EOIR was not required to release deduplicated records, rejecting plaintiff’s argument that deduplication is a per se FOIA violation; (4) EOIR was not required to produce an “irreparably damaged” audio recording that could not be copied; (5) EOIR’s referral of emails to DHS was not improper; and (6) EOIR’s “short description” of its withholdings under Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege were insufficient to carry agency’s burden.

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

Court opinion issued Aug. 30, 2024

Stevens v. HHS (N.D. Ill.) -- finding that: (1) U.S. Customs and Border Protection performed adequate search for records concerning Congresswoman’s communications with CBP about electronic health records, and that the agency properly withheld certain records pursuant to Exemption 5 (DPP), 6, and 7(C); (2) CBP unreasonably declined to search for certain “DHS communications and related materials created by or received from other components of DHS”; and (3) CBP failed to sufficiently explain why it limited its search for certain communications with lobbyists and private companies to the recollection of a single employee within the procurement office; and (4) CBP conducted reasonable search for certain records concerning a third party and that CBP properly closed another request in the absence of a signed third party authorization form, which plaintiff failed to prove she submitted.

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

Court opinions issued Aug. 28, 2024

Louise Trauma Ctr. v. USCIS (D. Md.) -- ruling that plaintiff was eligible for attorney’s fees and costs, which the government did not dispute, and that plaintiff also was entitled to an award even though the relevant factors were equally balanced for and against plaintiff; reducing amount of plaintiff’s requested fees by 61 percent because plaintiff’s hourly rate ($620/hr.) and the number of hours billed (88) were “unreasonable.”

Kennedy Human Rights v. ICE (W.D.N.Y.) -- revisiting its order requiring ICE to produce responsive records and a Vaughn Index to plaintiff on a monthly basis and granting government’s motion to use a sample Vaughn Index representing four percent of withheld records due to the “voluminous production” (approximately 17-21k pages).

Tower v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C.) -- concluding that CPB improperly relied on Exemption 6 in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of communications sent or received by a named employee (who also was an employees’ union president) that mentioned plaintiff, an agency employee and former union member; reasoning that subject’s employment status and “vocal” union activities were already publicly disclosed, and that his “quite weak” private interests were outweighed by public interest in understanding how CBP interacts with its employees’ union.

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

Court opinions issued Aug. 26, 2024

Am. Wild Horse Campaign v. BLM (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning a report on the inhuman treatment of animals under BLM care, denying the requester’s motion for fees and holding that it was neither “eligible” nor “entitled” to such fees and costs; explaining that the requester never “substantially prevailed” because the court never ordered any relief, and the requester failed to meet its burden to demonstrate eligibility under the “catalyst theory”; further explaining that the records received by the requester, which were largely “administrative” and already in the requester’s possession, would not benefit the public by increasing its awareness of government activities, and the agency had not be unreasonable in delaying production.

Reclaim the Records v. U.S. Dep't of State (S.D.N.Y.) — in a case concerning a request for the State Department’s “index” of reports concerning deaths of U.S. citizens abroad, granting the government’s motion for summary judgment and upholding its “no responsive records” response; accepting the agency’s representations that it no longer maintained a searchable index of death reports, but stored them in a system that could only retrieve discrete records “manually and one-at-a-time”; explaining that if the agency were to conduct individual search queries to provide the requester with a list of all death reports, that would entail the creation of records, and other “backend” search efforts would implicate non-responsive materials.

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

Court opinion issued Aug. 25, 2024

Am. First Legal Found. v. FTC (D.D.C.) — in a case involving a request for records about the FTC’s regulation of Twitter, granting the government’s partial motion to dismiss; rejecting the requester’s first alternative disclosure claim under the APA for failure to state a claim because the FOIA provides an adequate remedy; also rejecting a second alternative claim under the Mandamus Act for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction; allowing the requester’s challenge under FOIA to the FTC’s use of Exemption 7(A) to proceed.

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

Court opinions issued Aug. 23, 2024

Mullane v. DOJ (1st Cir.) — affirming district court’s decision that DOJ performed adequate search for records concerning its termination of plaintiff as a law student intern in 2018.

Holmes-Hamilton v. FBI (D.D.C.) — in a case involving multiple requests from survivors of three American vacationers who mysteriously died at a Dominican Republic resort, granting the FBI’s motion for summary judgment and upholding its withholding of toxicology reports, and other related records, under Exemption 7(E), which protects against the disclosure of law enforcement techniques and procedures; rejecting the FBI’s appeal to Exemption 7(D) because Dominican law enforcement authorities were not a “confidential source” and their collaboration with the FBI was never a secret; also concluding the FBI satisfied the foreseeable-harm standard and FOIA’s segregability requirement.

Judicial Watch, Inc. v. HHS (D.D.C.) — in a case concerning a request for the identity of two NIH employees involved with a research grant involving the use of human fetal tissue, granting HHS’s motion for summary judgment and upholding its use of Exemption 6 given the “sensitivity” and controversy of research into fetal tissue; noting also that the requester failed to articulate a public interest sufficient to outweigh the substantial privacy interests at stake because the identities of these employees would not shed light on official agency activities; otherwise concluding the agency satisfied the foreseeable-harm standard and rejecting the requester’s motion for limited discovery.

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

Court opinion issued Aug. 21, 2024

Libarov v. ICE (N.D. Ill.) -- determining that agency performed a reasonable search for records concerning its investigation of plaintiff for entering into a sham marriage, and that it properly withheld an investigatory report pursuant to Exemption 7(A), except for portions that set forth “basic personal information” regarding plaintiff.

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

Court opinions issued Aug. 20, 2024

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics In Wash. v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- in case seeking records about unprosecuted individuals who might have been involved in campaign finance violations committed by Michael Cohen on behalf of Donald Trump, ruling that: (1) portions of portions of DOJ’s declarations related to correspondence between the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and DOJ headquarters were “too conclusory and vague” to justify withholdings under Exemptions 5, 6, or 7(C); (2) DOJ properly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) to withhold search warrant records; and (3) DOJ properly relied on Exemption 5’s attorney-work product privilege to withhold reports and notes of interviews conducted during the SDNY’s investigations into potential campaign finance violations and obstruction of justice.

Pretzman v. Mayorkas (D.D.C.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s FOIA claim concerning the Secret Service’s disclosure of plaintiff’s cellular number to entities investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, because plaintiff’s request—which the agency processed as a request for an accounting of disclosures under the Privacy Act -- sought answers to questions rather than documents and, alternatively, was not reasonably described.

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

Court opinions issued Aug. 19, 2024

Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. DOJ -- following in camera review of records related to DOJ’s monitoring of certain elections, finding that: (1) DOJ properly withheld some but not all records pursuant to Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege, and all of DOJ’s attorney work-product privilege withholdings were proper; (2) DOJ’s single-sentence justification of foreseeable harm was insufficient, but not fatal for withheld information whose sensitivity was “obvious in context”; and (3) DOJ failed to show that records withheld under Exemption 7(A) concerned pending proceedings or that disclosure would interfere with such proceedings.

Buzzfeed v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- concluding that: (1) Executive Office for United States Attorneys performed adequate search for communications of named U.S. Attorneys pertaining to a criminal case, but it failed to sufficiently specify search terms used to locate communications of named Assistant U.S. Attorneys; (2) granting EOUSA’s withholdings under Exemptions 7(A), 7(D), and 7(F) as conceded by plaintiff, but denying agency’s categorical withholdings under Exemptions 5, 6, and 7(C) because agency offered only “broad explanations supporting the applicability of [the exemptions] to generalized categories of documents.”

Abhyanker v. USPTO (N.D. Cal.) -- determining that: (1) Patent & Trade Office performed reasonably searches for specific records that plaintiff requested concerning agency’s disciplinary case against him; (2) agency properly withheld certain records pursuant to Exemption 5’s attorney work-product and deliberative process privilege, as well as Exemptions 6, 7(A), and 7(C).

Rolling Stone LLC v. DOJ (S.D.N.Y.) -- denying plaintiff’s motion to compel DOJ to apply for an Open America stay because the motion was “really just a veiled request” to expedite DOJ’s ongoing production of documents and no “compelling need” for expedition existed.

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

Court opinions issued Aug. 16, 2024

Brodsky v. FBI (N.D. Ill.) -- finding after in camera review that: (1) FBI properly relied on Exemptions 3, 5, 6, 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E) to withhold records pertaining to plaintiff; and (2) FBI properly refused to confirm or deny the existence of records concerning specific third parties pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C).

Organized Cmtys. Against Deportations v. ICE (N.D. Ill.) -- following in camera review of sample documents concerning agency’s Citizens Academy, ruling that Agency properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(E).

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