FOIA Court Decision on Administrative Exhaustion

Each week, the staff of the Office of Information Policy reviews FOIA court decisions from the various federal courts around the country.  This review produces the weekly FOIA court decision summaries that are posted on the Court Decisions page of our site, which was updated today with the FOIA case decision summaries for the week ending June 8, 2012.

Included in this summary is a decision from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit which issued an opinion in Flaherty v. IRS, No. 11-5237. 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 11436 (D.C. Cir. June 6, 2012) (per curiam).  In this case, the D.C. Circuit addressed the issue of administrative exhaustion, affirming the decision of the district court and finding that although the plaintiff alleged that he had constructively exhausted his administrative remedies because the agency had taken more than twenty working days to respond to the request, he had filed his lawsuit "well after the government responded to the FOIA request," and once the response was made the requirement to exhaust administrative remedies had been re-triggered. 

You can access the weekly summaries, as well as previous summaries compiled by month, on our Court Decisions page.  We also organize court decisions by topic to make it easier to find the latest decisions addressing particular topical areas.   As we continue to post decisions by week, you can also follow OIP’s Twitter account, @FOIAPost, for the most up to date information on the additions to our site.