High Court Won't Touch FAA Applicant's FOIA Fight
By Grace Dixon, Law360, Jan. 10, 2022
The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to upend an en banc Ninth Circuit ruling that shielded documents requested by an air traffic control applicant through the Freedom of Information Act because the documents drafted by a third-party consultant were exempt from release.
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The U.S. Supreme Court denied petitions for writs of certiorari for two FOIA cases today: Jobe v. NTSB, and Rojas v. FAA, each challenging the government’s use of Exemption 5’s consultant corollary.
The National Archives and Records Administration received only 3967 FOIA requests in fiscal year 2021 according to quarterly data posted on FOIA.gov, a dramatic decline from 25,738 requests received by the agency in FY 2020 and an average of 57,500 requests from FY 2016 to FY 2019. Presumably this is due to the COVID-related shutdown of NARA’s research facilities, which typically receive numerous FOIA requests for archival records.
FOIA.gov
‘Paramount importance’: Judge orders FDA to hasten release of Pfizer vaccine docs
By Jenna Greene, Reuters, Jan. 7, 2022
A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make public the data it relied on to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, imposing a dramatically accelerated schedule that should result in the release of all information within about eight months.
That’s roughly 75 years and four months faster than the FDA said it could take to complete a Freedom of Information Act request by a group of doctors and scientists seeking an estimated 450,000 pages of material about the vaccine.
Read more here.
The U.S. Department of Labor cut its request backlog by 25 percent in fiscal year 2021 according to quarterly data posted on DOL’s website. DOL’s backlog stood at 1287 requests at the end of FY 2021, a reduction of 427 requests from its backlog of 1714 requests in FY 2020. The Department’s backlog reduction comes on the heels of a 72 percent increase from FY 2019 to FY 2020, during which time DOL’s backlog skyrocketed from 991 requests to 1714 requests (presumably due to teh pandemic). Over the past 10 years, DOL’s lowest request backlog has been 561 at the end of FY 2014.
The Department’s quarterly data also indicates that requesters submitted 13,325 requests in FY 2021, a 15.8 percent decrease from FY 2020, when it received 15,820 requests. DOL processed 10.5 percent fewer requests in FY 2021, falling from 15,645 requests in FY 2020 to 14,007 requests in FY 2021.
Agencies Seek Reversal in FOIA Suit Over Trump Administration Vetting at US Border
A Manhattan federal judge ruled in 2019 that the agencies did not carry their burden with regard to certain internal memos and directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to reassess its position and to disclose all responsive non-exempt materials.
By Tom McParland, NY Law Journal, Jan. 6, 2022
A government lawyer asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday to reverse a lower court ruling that required federal agencies to produce documents related to the Trump Administration’s alleged “ideological screening” of immigrants and refugees at the border.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Blain said the records, requested by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in 2017, included sensitive training materials and procedures for identifying suspected terrorists that, if divulged, could provide a “playbook” for bad actors to evade detection.
Read more here (accessible with free subscription).
District court decision is here.
Recording of Second Circuit argument is here.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reduced its backlog from 2546 requests at the end of FY 2020 to 2081 requests at the end of in FY 2021, an 18.2 percent decrease, according to quarterly FOIA reports posted on USDA’s website. The Department received 21,000 requests in FY 2021, down 7.9 percent from the 22,810 requests received in FY 2020; the Department processed 21,884 requests in FY 2021 as opposed to 23,103 requests in FY 2020, a decrease of 5.3 percent.
Pennsylvania treasure hunters sue the DOJ in Civil War gold case
By Jason Nark, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 4, 2022
The Pennsylvania treasure hunters on a never-ending quest to find a legendary lost shipment of Civil War gold are suing the Feds for documents.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Dennis Parada, a longtime treasure hunter from Clearfield County, alleges that the FBI has failed to provide him with any records of the case of the Elk County gold, despite a FOIA request filed more than three years ago
Read more here.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s FOIA request backlog increased in fiscal year 2021 by 569 requests, or 13.3 percent, according to quarterly FOIA data posted on DOT’s website. At the end of FY 2020, DOT’s request backlog stood at 4272 requests; it climbed to 4841 request by the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021. DOT received 15729 requests in FY 2021, a 7.5%,increase from FY 2020, when it received 14632 requests. The number of requests processed by DOT dropped from 15433 in FY 2020 to 14700 in FY 2021, a decrease of 5 percent,
USDA to Proactively Post Slaughter Records to Settle Lawsuit by AWI, Farm Sanctuary
Press Release, Animal Welfare Inst., Jan. 4, 2021
In a huge win for transparency and accountability, the US Department of Agriculture has agreed to publicly disclose on its website records related to the treatment of animals in US slaughter plants to settle a lawsuit filed by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and Farm Sanctuary. Marian Payson, a federal magistrate judge for the US District Court for the Western District of New York, approved the settlement yesterday.
The 2018 complaint alleged that the USDA failed to proactively disclose records relating to the enforcement of two laws—the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act—as required by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Read more here.