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Monday, June 18, 2018

Federal FOIA Does Not Authorize Lawsuits Against Individual Government Employees


A federal circuit court of appeals ruled in favor of a government agency in a lawsuit challenging the agency's response to a request under FOIA for certain government records. Henson v. Department of Health and Human Services (7th Cir. June 15, 2018).

First, the court held that the federal FOIA does not provide a cause of action against individual employees of the agency. The court noted that the federal FOIA gives jurisdiction to the courts to order the agency to produce agency records, and an individual employee is not an "agency" defined by the statute. Second, the court found that the agency had conducted an adequate and reasonable search of its records, and established that it made a good faith effort to conduct a search for the requested records. Finally, the court determined that the agency properly withheld or redacted documents under the statute's exemptions. 

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