The National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”) published a rule requiring owner and operators of for-hire vessel operating in the Gulf of Mexico to (1) install GPS devices that constantly archived the vessel’s locations, and (2) allow federal fisheries enforcement personnel access to the information.  A group of charter boat captains and owners challenged the regulation, […]

On July 21, 2020, the National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”) published a rule requiring owners and operators of for-hire vessel operating in the Gulf of Mexico to submit electronic fishing reports upon their return to port “prior to removing any fish from the vessel” (or within 30 minutes if no fish had been retained). Even […]

In Inter-Cooperative Exchange v. Department of Commerce, — F.4th —, 2022 WL 2036299 (June 7, 2022), a Ninth-Circuit panel split over the proper approach to searching a government employee’s personal cell phone for records responsive to a FOIA request.  As the majority irreverently described the suit: “In this case, crab fishers pull their nets from […]

“Court dockets in this district overflow with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) matters.  Many of those cases seek reams of records, requiring massive efforts from defendant agencies. . . . This is the system Congress hath wrought. And which this Court must dutifully implement.” American Center for Law and Justice v. DHS, Dkt. No. 21-1364 […]

In Marino v. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 33 F.4th 593 (2022), the D.C. Circuit denied plaintiffs’ standing to challenge the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) decision that it lacked enforcement authority.  In particular, NOAA had disclaimed authority to enforce provisions of “special exception permits” that required SeaWorld to perform necropsies on its orca […]

In May 2018, a non-citizen seeking immigration relief submitted a complaint against his attorney to Executive Office of Immigration Review (“EOIR”).  He alleged that his attorney had charged him $10,000 a year to handle his case, begun immigration proceedings without his consent, and forged his name on various legal documents.  Now, almost four years later, […]

Recently, the Second Circuit issued a significant Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) decision construing the FOIA exemption covering law enforcement records that “would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the […]

New Jersey sought to withdraw from the interstate compact that established the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, an interstate compact entity.  The Waterfront Commission sued to enjoin New Jersey’s Governor from moving forward to terminate the Compact. The Third Circuit refused to allow the suit, holding that it was barred by sovereign immunity. In […]

Summary: A recent district court decision, Texas Medical Association v. HHS, Dkt No. 6:21-CV-425 (E.D. Tex. Feb. 23, 2022), accessible on WESTLAW at Medicare & Medicaid Guide ¶307259 (C.C.H.), 2022 WL 597141, has troubling implications both for agencies’ traditional authority to create rebuttable presumptions and for the scope of Administrative Procedure Act section 553’s “good […]

Summary: A recent district court decision, Texas Medical Association v. HHS, Dkt No. 6:21-CV-425 (E.D. Tex. Feb. 23, 2022), accessible on WESTLAW at Medicare & Medicaid Guide ¶307259 (C.C.H.), 2022 WL 597141, has troubling implications both for agencies’ traditional authority to create rebuttable presumptions and for the scope of Administrative Procedure Act section 553’s “good […]

Summary: This post summarizes a report adopted by the FOIA Advisory Committee on March 10, 2022, regarding the use of a Glomar response to neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive to a FOIA request. Perhaps Howard Hughes is somewhere grimacing right about now. In 1968, at the height of the Cold War, […]

Summary: A recent district court decision, Texas Medical Association v. HHS, Dkt No. 6:21-CV-425 (E.D. Tex. Feb. 23, 2022), accessible on WESTLAW at Medicare & Medicaid Guide ¶307259 (C.C.H.), 2022 WL 597141, has troubling implications both for agencies’ traditional authority to create rebuttable presumptions and for the scope of Administrative Procedure Act section 553’s “good […]

This is the second part of a two-part blogpost previewing United States v. Zubaydah, one of two cases this Supreme Court term in which the Court will take up the rarely-discussed state secrets privilege.  Part I of this series laid out the state secrets privilege (largely focusing on United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 […]

The state secrets privilege allows the government to prevent the disclosure of military and diplomatic secrets in litigation.  There is little Supreme Court precedent regarding the privilege — the seminal case being United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953). However, the Court has granted certiorari in two state secrets cases — U.S. v. Zubaydah, […]

The Trump Administration displayed profound disdain for long-standing policies and norms, as well as the career federal employees who often serve as their guardians.  Those career officials, formerly disparaged as “bureaucrats,” but more recently collectively cast as “the deep state,” resisted, sometimes by speaking out publicly. This pattern was particularly pronounced in the field of […]