The Trump administration faced a setback on Tuesday in its attempt to close an office that once played a vital role in handling Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. This development unfolded as U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, ruled against the administration’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the office’s closure. The lawsuit was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonpartisan watchdog organization.

CREW launched its legal battle in April 2025, targeting the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with senior officials at these agencies. They argued against the dismantling of the FOIA office, seeking injunctive relief to ensure these agencies allocate sufficient resources and staff to process FOIA requests efficiently and keep the office functional.

In a prior development in June 2025, Judge Kelly had denied CREW’s plea for injunctive relief, as reported by Law&Crime. As the legal proceedings advanced, CREW and HHS reached an agreement in August 2025 to pause motions on one contentious issue, narrowing the scope of the litigation.

The recent court decision came amidst cross-motions for summary judgment and a dismissal attempt by the government. The judge’s ruling was multifaceted, denying both parties’ motions for summary judgment, while granting and rejecting parts of the motion to dismiss. This decision further narrowed the case by eliminating another claim brought forth by CREW under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The case now moves towards a trial focused on the remaining claim, setting the stage for further courtroom battles.

Now, on cross-motions for summary judgment and the government’s dismissal bid, the court has issued a double-edged ruling, denying both motions for summary judgment while granting in part and denying in part the motion to dismiss. This result whittles down yet another CREW count filed under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and sets the stage for a trial on the lone remaining count somewhere down the line.

“CREW has stated a FOIA claim upon which relief can be granted in Count II, and so will deny Defendants’ motion to dismiss on that count,” the opinion reads. “But on this record, the Court agrees with neither side’s request for summary judgment on Count II. Thus, it will deny without prejudice both parties’ summary judgment motions on that count. And as for Count III, the Court agrees with Defendants and will dismiss CREW’s APA claim for failure to state a claim.”

In its motion to dismiss, the government aimed to kneecap the nonprofit by arguing it lacked standing to sue. In service of this argument, the Department of Justice said CREW failed to support a claim about the so-called FOIA “reading-room provision,” wherein an agency provides a physical location for the public to review records. Similarly, the DOJ says CREW did not fully flesh out a related claim about the CDC denying access to certain “research data.”

And, the government adds, in any event, there is not a judicial remedy available for CREW here due to precedent on the matter.

That argument, Kelly observes, misses the mark entirely.

“Defendants misread CREW’s amended complaint,” the opinion goes on, noting that the reading-room allegation was only made to bolster the group’s “overarching claim” that “eliminating the CDC FOIA office” amounts to a “policy or practice of violating FOIA.”

“CREW has standing to bring this claim, as it has suffered informational injury caused by the closure of the CDC FOIA office in several ways (as explained above), and its injury can be redressed in some way by the Court under the FOIA statute, which affords courts the authority to fashion ‘broad’ and ‘flexible’ equitable remedies,” the opinion continues. “So even assuming the Court could not provide separate redress…that would not defeat CREW’s standing to bring its alleged policy-or-practice FOIA claim.”

On the merits of CREW’s FOIA claim, the government fared no better.

The DOJ, taking a wide swing, argued the nonprofit simply failed to state a claim. Kelly rejected this argument out of hand.

“The Court finds that CREW has stated a FOIA claim,” the opinion reads.

The court explains that FOIA law allows plaintiffs to sue “over more than an agency’s response to a specific request for records.”

That is, well-settled law in the D.C. Circuit says that aside from challenging any given agency’s specific response to any party’s specific request, a plaintiff may bring “a claim that an agency policy or practice will impair the party’s lawful access to information in the future.” An essential aspect of such a lawsuit is that the plaintiff must also plead that the agency’s policy or practice “results in a repeated violation of FOIA.”

And, Kelly says, CREW has alleged enough such facts for their claim to survive – at least at this juncture in the litigation.

From the opinion, at length:

CREW has sufficiently pled both elements of a policy-or-practice claim. First, CREW identifies a concrete policy: that Defendants have “eliminat[ed] the CDC FOIA office and . . . shift[ed] all its responsibilities to the OS [the Office of the HHS Secretary] FOIA office.” To be sure, this is not a singular policy so much as it is a combination of actions taken by Defendants at the agency level, including the initial April 1, 2025 reduction in CDC FOIA staff, as well as later reconfigurations of how HHS electronically routes FOIA requests. But the contours of the policy or practice need not be sharply “articulated in regulations or an official statement of policy.”

“Defendants’ wholesale office closure and routing all CDC FOIA requests to OS FOIA satisfies this requirement, and Defendants do not—and could not—argue otherwise,” Kelly writes.

The judge further determined that CREW “plausibly” alleged the CDC FOIA office closure “has violated and will continue to violate several FOIA requirements” due to a lack of public inspection of CDC records, failures to make “reasonable efforts to search” for those records, and failure to make such records “promptly available.”

“CREW clears this bar easily,” the opinion continues. “It alleges that after the closure, several of its FOIA requests to HHS went unanswered for months, that other organizations that filed FOIA requests at the time were similarly ‘stonewall[ed],’ that the CDC has ceased updating its online FOIA portal and reading-room web page, and that OS FOIA does not have the staff, resources, or expertise to process all FOIA requests made to the HHS.”

At this stage, the court says, those allegations inure to the plaintiff’s benefit — and the government has done nothing to prove otherwise.

“[T]he Court finds that CREW has plausibly alleged that closing the CDC FOIA office and subsequent rerouting will result in repeated violations of at least some of FOIA’s statutory requirements.” the opinion reads.

Far from settling the lawsuit, Kelly’s lengthy opinion also directed the parties to file a joint status report outlining how they wish to proceed. That filing is due on April 28.

In a dramatic turn of events at Miami International Airport, three women found themselves in handcuffs after allegedly refusing to pay for all their carry-on luggage and barging onto a plane. The incident involved Nafisa Dockery, Dionjana Cochran, and Davana Cochran, who are now facing charges of trespassing and resisting an officer without violence.

According to court documents, Nafisa also faces an additional charge of battery. All three women have entered pleas of not guilty as the legal proceedings begin to unfold. The altercation, which took place on March 29, caused a significant delay, holding up a Frontier Airlines flight to Philadelphia for over an hour.

As detailed in an arrest affidavit reviewed by Oxygen, the trouble began when a Frontier Airlines employee noticed that the women had not paid for all their carry-on bags. The group had only covered the cost for one out of two bags. Upon being asked to pay the outstanding fee, the situation quickly escalated into a verbal confrontation.

The affidavit reveals that the airline employee made several attempts to explain that failure to pay would result in removal from the flight. Despite these warnings, tensions rose, culminating in the women forcing their way onto the aircraft, leading to their subsequent arrest.

Nafisa, Dionjana and Davana allegedly began a verbal altercation, read the doc, and the employee reiterated that they needed to pay for the additional bag or they would be removed them from the flight. 

“We don’t have to listen,” Nafisa allegedly told her friends, police wrote in the doc. “Let’s go.” 

The employee then said they could not board and that police would be notified if they continued protesting.   

One of the women allegedly responded, “Call law enforcement,” per the affidavit, before the group rushed onto the plane, bypassing a door marked “Restricted area, authorized personnel only.” 

Police were called to the aircraft and Frontier staff told authorities that the women’s boarding passes were denied, read the document. Staff and police told the women they needed to exit the plane, but they allegedly refused multiple times, even when police stated they were issuing a trespass warning and the women could be arrested. 

Finally, police informed the trio that they were under arrest, according to the affidavit, and requested that everyone deboard the plane. Nafisa, on her way out, police noted in the doc, allegedly spat on another woman. 

Once inside the airport, deputies tried to handcuff Davana, Dionjana and Nafisa but they allegedly tensed their bodies and pulled their arms away, per the affidavit, before deputies could finally restrain them.

A video posted to TikTok and published by CBS Miami showed the women being escorted through the airport by authorities.

The women are scheduled to appear in court on April 22. 

A spokesperson for the public defender’s office declined to comment when asked by Oxygen. A spokesperson for Frontier Airlines did not immediately return a request for comment from Oxygen.

This week, a significant legal decision emerged as a judge denied a request for a new trial from Miles Bryant, a former police officer convicted of murdering a Georgia teenager in 2022.

Bryant’s legal team had contended that his trial representation was insufficient and raised concerns about the use of Life360 data during the proceedings. Despite these arguments, the judge decided against granting a new trial after considering oral arguments presented in February, according to a report by WSB.

Convicted on several charges, including malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping, and filing a false report, Bryant received a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the killing of Susana Morales. His conviction followed a trial that delved deeply into the tragic events leading up to Morales’s death.

The case began when Morales disappeared in July 2022, and after seven months of uncertainty, her decomposing remains were discovered. Crucially, Bryant’s firearm, which he had reported missing the day after Morales vanished, was discovered nearby, as detailed by CrimeOnline.

During the trial in July 2024, significant evidence was presented, including testimony from Gwinnett Police Detective Angela Carter. She informed the jury that cell phone data tracked Bryant to the location where Morales’s body was found. Furthermore, she revealed that Bryant had conducted several searches linked to her disappearance and had also looked up his license plate number on a website designed to track license plate recognition cameras.

Investigators also found that Bryant searched Google for information about how long a body takes to decompose.

Bryant was fired from his job as a Doraville Police officer after his arrest.

Bryant’s attorney is appealing the judge’s ruling denying him a new trial to the Georgia Supreme Court, WSB said.