The case involved Lluridia Ocampo Cambrai, a Mexican national in removal proceedings, who sought a preliminary injunction from the district court. She asked the court to declare that her U.S.-citizen son’s age would be frozen as of March 20, 2026—the date an immigration judge found she had shown the required “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” but reserved decision due to the annual statutory cap on cancellation-of-removal grants—and to bar any later denial of her application once her son turned 21 in July 2026. The court denied the motion. It held that it lacked jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(9), which requires claims arising from removal proceedings and involving statutory interpretation to be brought only through a petition for review of a final removal order in the courts of appeals, not in district court before proceedings conclude. The court rejected arguments that the claim was collateral or that relief would be permanently lost without immediate intervention, noting that appellate courts review such legal questions de novo.
U.S. citizen Miad Ghaffari Ajrabadi and his Iranian wife Fahimeh Mohajeri sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other federal officials, seeking to compel adjudication of her immigrant visa application, which a consular officer had refused under INA § 221(g) after an April 2024 interview at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan and placed in administrative processing with no further action for roughly 26 months. Plaintiffs alleged unreasonable delay under the Administrative Procedure Act and requested mandamus relief to force a decision within 30 days. The district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, holding that the complaint failed to state a plausible claim of unreasonable delay. Applying the six TRAC factors, the court found the first two (rule of reason and any statutory timetable) favored the government because the delay fell well short of the multi-year periods typically deemed unreasonable in this district; the fourth factor (competing agency priorities) weighed strongly against relief because granting it would simply reorder the queue at other applicants’ expense; and the third and fifth factors (health and welfare interests) also favored defendants despite the hardship of family separation. The mandamus claim was dismissed because the APA provided an adequate alternative remedy.
This FOIA case arose when America First Legal Foundation sued the CDC to obtain records of its communications with social media companies about identifying and flagging COVID-19 or vaccine-related misinformation or disinformation. After the CDC released most documents but withheld portions under Exemptions 4 (confidential commercial information) and 5 (deliberative process privilege), the court granted in part and denied in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment. The court upheld the Exemption 5 withholdings of meeting agendas and summaries because they were predecisional and deliberative, and rejected the plaintiff’s argument that alleged government misconduct could overcome the privilege. It also upheld the Exemption 4 withholdings of BrandLift materials from Meta, finding them commercial, customarily kept confidential, and subject to foreseeable competitive harm if released. However, the court ordered disclosure of the CrowdTangle records, ruling that they were not commercial in nature, not shown to be sufficiently confidential, and thus did not qualify for protection under Exemption 4.
The case concerned whether the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Program Statement 5100.08, which applies a distinct criminal-history scoring method to D.C. Code offenders housed in BOP facilities, violates the Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiff Artavious Love, a D.C. Code offender, sued on behalf of himself and a proposed class, alleging that the scoring system—which counts many prior convictions excluded under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines—arbitrarily produces higher security-point totals and more restrictive placements than the method used for most federal offenders. The court certified the class of present and future D.C. Code offenders, finding the named plaintiff’s individual claim inherently transitory and therefore subject to relation-back, and granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment while denying the defendants’ cross-motion. It held that the scoring rules were arbitrary and capricious under the APA because they lacked any reasoned explanation for departing from the Guidelines’ exclusions and produced systematically unequal results without statutory authorization. The court did not reach the equal-protection claim.
This FOIA case arose when America First Legal Foundation sued the CDC to obtain records of its communications with social media companies about identifying and flagging COVID-19 or vaccine-related misinformation or disinformation. After the CDC released most documents but withheld portions under Exemptions 4 (confidential commercial information) and 5 (deliberative process privilege), the court granted in part and denied in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment. The court upheld the Exemption 5 withholdings of meeting agendas and summaries because they were predecisional and deliberative, and rejected the plaintiff’s argument that alleged government misconduct could overcome the privilege. It also upheld the Exemption 4 withholdings of BrandLift materials from Meta, finding them commercial, customarily kept confidential, and subject to foreseeable competitive harm if released. However, the court ordered disclosure of the CrowdTangle records, ruling that they were not commercial in nature, not shown to be sufficiently confidential, and thus did not qualify for protection under Exemption 4.
The case involves multiple consolidated lawsuits by plaintiffs (including Rep. Barbara Lee and others) against former President Donald Trump and various co-defendants, alleging claims under federal and D.C. law arising from events leading up to and including January 6, 2021. After the court largely denied Trump's motion for summary judgment on official-acts immunity and rejected the government's request to substitute itself as defendant on D.C. claims, Trump and the United States appealed those rulings and sought a full stay of all proceedings pending review. The court granted a complete stay of proceedings in six cases where Trump is the sole defendant, stayed only discovery as to Trump in the Smith case while allowing other discovery and matters to proceed, and stayed all proceedings in the Lee case. It reasoned that consolidated cases retain separate identities under Hall v. Hall, that official-acts immunity protects against the burdens of litigation (requiring a stay where Trump alone is sued), and that Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co. limits any broader stay to only those aspects of multi-defendant cases directly involved in the appeal, with discretionary stay factors not supporting a full pause in Smith.
