Bayala v. DHS, No. 14-5279 (D.C. Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff, a citizen of Burkina Faso, filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, after DHS failed to disclose many of the immigration documents he had requested and gave no particularized explanation for its withholding decision. Shortly after plaintiff filed suit, the Department reversed course and spontaneously released a number of previously withheld documents, while offering a heavily revamped explanation for its remaining withholdings. The district court dismissed the case for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The court reversed and remanded, concluding that the only live FOIA decision now under review is the one the Department chose to make for the first time in litigation, and for which there was no administrative avenue to exhaust. Once the government abandoned its original FOIA decision, the dispute between the parties centered on the correctness of the Department’s materially novel and different in-court disclosure decision.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.