FOIA News: New leadership at VA's FOIA office

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a new director of its Office of FOIA, Records and Assessment Compliance: Richard Thompson, who has been detailed from the department’s Enterprise Risk Management division. A full biography is available here.

FOIA News: EPA's backlog up nearly 12% in FY 2021

The backlog of requests at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grew from 1783 requests at the end of fiscal year 2020 to 1995 requests at the end of FY 2021, an increase of 11.9 percent, according to quarterly data available on FOIA.gov. The agency received 7098 requests in FY 2021, up 3 percent from 6891 requests in FY 2020; it processed 7475 requests in FY 2021, down 3.7 percent from 7765 requests in FY 2020.

FOIA News: Virginia lawmaker wants requests to be submitted by certified mail

Because an email went to spam, a lawmaker wants all FOIA requests made by certified mail

By Patrick Wilson, Richmond Times, Jan. 12, 2022

A citizen emailed a FOIA request to a state lawmaker and it went into spam. That prompted the lawmaker to file a bill that would require all public records requests in Virginia to be made by certified mail.

Open government advocates said the bill by Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax, would create barriers to citizens who want to make FOIA requests, would hinder government agencies like Fairfax County or Virginia State Police who handle FOIA requests digitally, and would be "horrendous" for reporters.

Read more here.

FOIA News: First FOIA decision of 2022 yet to be issued

For those wondering whether we’ve been sleeping on the job, the answer is no— as in, no published FOIA decisions that we are aware of have been issued in the first 10 days of 2022. Stay tuned.

FOIA News: High Court Won't Touch FAA Applicant's FOIA Fight

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.

Read more here (subscription).

FOIA News: SCOTUS denies two FOIA petitions

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.

FOIA News: NARA's FOIA numbers sink in FY 2021

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

FOIA News: Court orders FDA to speed up processing of vaccine records

‘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.

FOIA News: Labor slashed request backlog by 25% in FY 2021

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.

FOIA News: Second Circuit hears arguments on "extreme vetting" records

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.