Hamdan v. United States Department of Justice

Naji Hamdan, Hossam Hemdan, and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment to several federal agencies in Plaintiffs’ suit under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). Plaintiffs contend that: (1) two agencies did not conduct adequate searches for records responsive to Plaintiffs’ FOIA request; (2) two agencies improperly invoked several exemptions to FOIA’s disclosure requirements; and (3) the district court erred in not making findings of fact about whether there was nonexempt information in the withheld records that could be segregated and disclosed. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . Because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and the State Department conducted searches reasonably calculated to produce records responsive to Plaintiffs’ request, and because the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency (“DIA”) properly withheld somé records under several exemptions to FOIA’s disclosure requirements, we affirm the district court’s rulings on the adequacy of the agencies’ searches or the invocation of the challenged exemptions. But because the district court did not make…