Gannett Satellite Info. Network, LLC v. DOJ (D.D.C.) — on renewed motion for summary judgment in a case concerning access to “individual-level data about people who died while in custody of local jails and state and federal prisons between 2010 and 2019,” ruling in favor of the plaintiff on the issues of search adequacy and the application of exemptions; but granting in part the agency’s motion for partial reconsideration, thus excusing disclosure of certain records whose production was previously stayed and which would be covered by Exemption 3 and the “express confidentiality provision” of the Crime Control Act; notably, explaining the agency improperly limited its search by relying on a technical understanding of whether certain BOP data were “relevant” to the request, despite “being on notice about” what the plaintiff actually wanted and having failed to correct information online (and in the case record) that helped perpetuate plaintiff’s (and the court’s) misunderstanding; emphasizing “[t]he circumstances here”—either “sloppiness and inaccuracy” or, “at worst, intentional obfuscation”—“certainly do not flatter defendant”; further holding that Exemption 7(C) did not apply because the Bureau of Justice Statistics “does not specialize in law enforcement” and the agency otherwise failed to offer any evidence linking the requested data to a law-enforcement investigation; rejecting also the use of Exemption 6 because either there is no substantial privacy interest implicated or the public interest in disclosure is overriding.
Tran v. DOJ (D.D.C.) — in a case brought by a former FBI agent seeking records about his own “criminal investigation and prosecution,” granting in part and denying in part the government’s motion for summary judgment; holding that, while the FBI’s Glomar response was justified for certain records, the agency failed to meet its burden with respect to others about an “undercover informant” who had revealed himself to the public and whom the FBI had “officially acknowledged" as serving in such capacity in another lawsuit; directing the government to provide further explanation for an apparent discrepancy between its initial estimate of responsive pages and the number of pages actually produced; finally, rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments about agency “bad faith” as “baseless and without merit.”
Stevens v. DHS (N.D. Ill.) — rejecting, in large part, a requester’s search-adequacy challenge because she “failed to rebut the presumption of good faith” afforded to agency declarations and because the agency’s search methodology (such as limiting efforts to certain offices or databases) was otherwise reasonable; nevertheless concluding that one no-responsive-records search conducted by an ICE field office involved unreasonably limited keywords because two other field offices were able to locate records with “more expansive search terms”; requiring limited supplemental searches for one request where ICE failed to explain its search terms and omitted search terms for subparts of the request; holding the government properly withheld records under Exemption 4 because “private contractors submitted the commercial information . . . with an assurance of privacy,” and Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege; ordering ICE to “re-process and re-evaluation its withholdings” of records not included in the parties’ agreed-upon initial “representative sampling”; finally, ordering ICE to reproduce an “unreadable . . . PDF of a spreadsheet” in native Excel format.
Burrus v. USDA (9th Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision dismissing pro se plaintiff’s FOIA claim, because plaintiff’s “general request for documentation supporting the agency's employment actions included in a letter that described its purpose as protesting those actions did not constitute a FOIA request”; noting that plaintiff’s letter was not addressed to a FOIA office and failed to include the phrase ‘FOIA request” as required by agency regulations.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.
