November 2020 FOIA Litigation with Five-Year Monthly Trends
During the month of November 2020 federal district courts saw a total of 55 new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits filed under 5 U.S.C. 552. To place this number in perspective, 55 new filings compares with a monthly average of 63 filings during the last 12 months. This month’s total brought overall FOIA filings on an annual basis for these last 12 months to 758.
The figure below provides a more detailed view of monthly trends during the past five years. The height of each bar reflects the number of filings in that month. To see the actual filing count mouse over any bar. The superimposed line over the bars is the moving 12-month average. It is computed by adding up the 12 months ending at a given month, and then dividing that total by 12 to obtain the monthly average over this period. Mousing over any bar also shows the calculated result for this moving average for that given month.
Locating additional details on these cases: The FOIA Project compiles summaries of each of these cases written by Harry Hammitt for FOIAproject.org into a weekly blog posting. These typically are posted every Thursday. For recent postings see:
* November 26, 2020: FOIA Activity: 63 new FOIA court documents, plus case descriptions.
* November 19, 2020: NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, INC. et al v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES and 17 other new FOIA lawsuits.
* November 11, 2020: U.S. RIGHT TO KNOW v. NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH and 10 other new FOIA lawsuits, plus case descriptions.
* October 29, 2020: BUZZFEED INC. v. NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH et al and 10 other new FOIA lawsuits, plus case descriptions.
* October 22, 2020: CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBILITY AND ETHICS IN WASHINGTON v. U.S. POSTAL SERVICE and 20 other new FOIA lawsuits.
Documents in each case, including the complaint that was filed and the court’s docket sheet, are available elsewhere on FOIAproject.org. They can be found by using the “Search Lawsuits” tool under the “FOIA Lawsuits” menu.
