UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA JUDICIAL WATCH, INC., Plaintiff, v. Civil Action No. 22-3153 (JEB) DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, Defendant. MEMORANDUM OPINION In this Freedom of Information Act dispute, Plaintiff Judicial Watch, Inc. seeks a broad swath of records from Defendant Department of Health and Human Services relating to the safety of several COVID-19 vaccines. The Department now moves to dismiss, contending that Plaintiff’s overbroad request fails to reasonably describe the records sought. Although the Court is sympathetic to HHS’s position that Judicial Watch seeks too much, it cannot say that the request does not reasonably identify the records at issue. While it will thus deny the Motion, the Court encourages the parties to work together towards narrowing the request. I. Background The Court draws the facts from Plaintiff’s Complaint and for purposes of this Motion presumes them to be true. See Sparrow v. United Air Lines, Inc., 216 F.3d 1111, 1113 (D.C. Cir. 2000). Congress enacted FOIA “to pierce the veil of administrative secrecy and to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny.” Dep’t of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 361 (1976) (quotation marks and citation omitted). The statute provides that “each agency, upon any request 1 for records which (i) reasonably describes such records and (ii) is made in accordance with published rules . . . shall make the records promptly available to any person.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(A). A request “reasonably describes” the sought records if “the agency is able to determine precisely what records are being requested.” Kowalczyk v. Dep’t of Just., 73 F.3d 386, 388 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (quoting Yeager v. Drug Enf’t Admin., 678 F.2d 315, 326 (D.C. Cir. 1982)). Judicial Watch’s FOIA request here, submitted via email on June 1, 2022, sought the following records from the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a component of HHS: 1. All safety studies, data, reports, and analyses produced by the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID) relating to the safety of “vaccines” and/or gene therapies to treat and/or prevent SARS-CoV- 2 and/or COVID-19 made by Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Janssen. 2. All emails sent to and from the following DMID officials relating to the safety of “vaccines” and/or gene therapies to treat and/or prevent SARSCoV-2 and/or COVID-19 made by Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Janssen: a. The Director of DMID b. The head of the Office of Genomics & Advanced Technologies c. The head of the Office of International Research in Infectious Diseases d. The head of the Office of Regulatory Affairs e. The head of the Office of Clinical Research Affairs f. The head of the Clinical Trials Management Section g. The head of the Virology Branch h. The head of the Respiratory Diseases Branch i. The head of the Influenza, SARS, and Other Viral Respiratory Diseases Section. ECF No. 1 (Compl.), ¶ 5. The request specified that “[t]he time frame for the records sought is …
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