The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a powerful statute. Enacted in 1966, it established a mechanism for members of the public to request agency records from federal information and documents, provided that such information does not fall into one of FOIA’s many exemptions.
FOIA appears frequently in Law Street Media, in articles written by the team at FOIAengine. FOIAengine logs FOIA requests as they happen, allowing users to investigate who is making requests under the statute. This article will instead look at FOIA litigation – lawsuits brought by members of the public to challenge the denial of a FOIA request.
Such cases are categorized under the PACER Nature of Suit code 895. The below graph tracks the annual amount of cases filed under that type from 2015 to the present. (The 2025 data represents the first seven months of the year.)
FOIA cases have grown, although not uniformly, over the last decade. The years 2020 and 2021 saw fewer cases than prior and subsequent years, for example. This tracks overall trends in federal litigation, with steady growth over the years but with slowdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Approximately 7,000 cases have been filed in the last decade. Over half, unsurprisingly, have been filed in the District of Columbia District Court. The rest of the top courts are a who’s-who of the most populous districts in the country – New York, the Bay Area, Seattle, and more. This could hint to who’s filing these cases.
The top plaintiff for the last decade is Judicial Watch, which describes itself as a “a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.” The group has filed 410 FOIA lawsuits, according to Docket Alarm, more than twice that of the runner-up, American Oversight. Other top litigants include Informed Consent Action Network, Protect the Public’s Trust, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: CREW. The top-filing individual is Jason Leopold, who has been covered by the FOIAengine team in Law Street Media.
The defendants in the cases are revealing as well. The top defendant is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Department of Justice. The Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Health and Human Services round out the top 4. The full list can be viewed above.
While Docket Alarm analytics cannot reveal what happens in each case, they do show that the cases last, on average, for 554 days.
