FOIA News: NYT soliciting feds on FOIA layoffs

Following highly publicized layoffs at HHS FOIA offices, the New York Times has published an online questionnaire that asks federal employees to provide information about staffing levels, layoffs, and buyouts at agency FOIA offices.

Court opinion issued Mar. 30, 2025

Farris v. Garland (D.D.C.) -- determining that: (1) the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys conducted a reasonable search for certain records related to plaintiff’s conviction for drug trafficking, and it had no obligation to obtain records maintained by other federal or local agencies; (2) government properly withheld certain information from investigative “DEA 6 Reports” pursuant to Exemptions 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E).

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinion issued Mar. 28, 2025

Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Forest Serv. (D.D.C.) -- finding that: (1) federal contractor’s appraisal of a land exchange between the government and defendant-intervenor, a private mining company, qualified as an “agency record” because the agency “constructively controlled” the appraisal based on the four-factor test set forth in Burka v. HHS, 87 F.3d 508 (D.C. Cir. 1996); using the same test, finding that the contractor’s documents containing data underlying the appraisal were not agency records; (2) agency justified withholding information that would result in foreseeable economic harm to defendant-intervenor, but offered only inadmissible hearsay as to whether withheld information that would result in foreseeable harms to the appraiser and third-party experts’ business interests; (3) agency properly invoked Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold the appraisal, summary, and technical report as pre-decisional and deliberative, but rejecting the reasonableness of the harms foreseen by the agency; and (4) agency’s segregability analysis was insufficient because the agency inconsistently processed an appraisal summary and a technical report.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2025 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2024 and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: Senate Judiciary Committee announces FOIA hearing

The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary has announced a full committee hearing on FOIA that will take place on Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 10:15am. The hearing is entitled: “The Freedom of Information Act: Perspectives from Public Requesters.” Complete details, as well as live video of the hearing on April 8th, can be found here. A witness list has not yet been released.

FOIA News: HHS slashes FOIA staff at multiple agencies; centralized FOIA office in the works, says HHS.

RFK Jr. purges CDC and FDA's public records teams, despite "transparency" promises

By Alexander Tin, CBS News, Apr. 1, 2025

Teams handling Freedom of Information Act requests at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration were gutted Tuesday as part of the widespread job cuts ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., multiple officials said. 

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All of the workers in the CDC's FOIA office were cut, two officials said. Two-thirds of the Food and Drug Administration's records request staff were also cut, down to 50 remaining. 

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Many FOIA staff at the National Institutes of Health were also let go, one official said, but not all. No explanation was given for why some were cut while others remain on the job, the official said, in an apparent violation of the federal government's procedures for prioritizing for some employees based on their military and federal service.

The goal of the cuts is to create a central place to handle FOIA requests for the entire department, an HHS official said, making it easier for the public to submit their requests. 

Read more here.

[Earlier in the day, Bloomberg News reported that the FDA, CDC, and the NIH had sacked all of their FOIA employees.]

FOIA News: Heritage's oversight project to become independent entity

The Heritage Foundation announced yesterday that it s oversight project led by Mike Howell is becoming an independent 501(c)(4) organization. Since its launch in 2022, the project has reportedly filed over 100,000 FOIA requests; it also has filed more than 100 lawsuits.

FOIA News: This and that

• The FBI’s “Vault” has posted material on comedian Richard Pryor, U.S. Senator John Glenn, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

• Bloomberg reported that the FBI agents and FOIA staff are working overtime to review Jeffrey Epstein files.

• See the following article for tips on making FOIA requests to improve nonprofit grant applications.

• DOJ/OIP has collected and posted agency Chief FOIA Officer Reports for 2025 here.

• The Office of Government Information Services has posted a profile of federal FOIA Advisory Committee member Margaret Kwoka.

FOIA News: DOGE releases records retention policy in ongoing FOIA battle

As it stands, FOIA Advisor has identified four pending lawsuits that involve a fight over whether the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” is an “agency,” as defined at 5 U.S.C. § 552(f)(1). In one of those lawsuits—American Oversight v. U.S. DOGE—the requester has moved for a preservation order. The government filed its opposition to that motion on Thursday evening. DOGE’s argument focuses on its claimed status as a non-agency component of the Executive Office of the President, which would make it subject to the Presidential Records Act. It also highlighted existing efforts to preserve records pursuant to an official records retention policy and a litigation hold. Notably, DOGE filed a copy of its records retention policy, which appears to have gone into force at the beginning of the week—March 25, 2025.

FOIA News: Roughly 58,000 documents at issue in CREW's DOGE FOIA suit

According to a notice filed on Thursday evening, the government estimates that “approximately 58,000 documents” maintained by the U.S. DOGE Service are responsive to a FOIA request being litigated by Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington. DOGE explained it “has not yet been able to conduct a review for responsiveness, and deduplication.” The parties continue to contest whether DOGE is an “agency” for purposes of the FOIA, but the presiding judge has already denied the government’s recent motion for reconsideration on that very question, thus leaving in place a preliminary injunction compelling DOGE to process CREW’s request for the time being. FOIA Advisor has previously covered developments in this case. Just over a week ago, DOGE filed its motion for summary judgment, which should be decided on an expedited basis.

FOIA News: ASAP's Sunshine Week Webinar on "FOIA Court Cases"

The American Society of Access Professionals has published a video recording of its recent Sunshine Week webinar on developments in FOIA caselaw. The presenters were FOIA Advisor’s own Ryan Mulvey (who also serves as ASAP President), and Michael Heise of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A complete list of the cases covered in the webinar, with summaries and citations, can be found here.