Informed Consent Action Network v. National Institutes of Health

Summary

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted the National Institutes of Health’s motion for summary judgment and denied Informed Consent Action Network’s cross-motion in a FOIA action. The court held that NIH properly withheld identifying information concerning researchers and NIH personnel under FOIA Exemption 6 because disclosure would implicate substantial privacy interests and foreseeable risks of harassment or threats. The court also concluded that NIH had adequately satisfied its obligation to release reasonably segregable information.

Holdings

1. The names, email addresses, titles, organization names, case numbers, and other identifying information concerning the researchers and NIH personnel were personnel, medical, or similar files protected from disclosure under FOIA Exemption 6.
2. NIH properly withheld the identifying information because disclosure would compromise substantial privacy interests, while ICAN failed to show that disclosure of the individuals' identities would meaningfully advance a cognizable public interest in understanding the COVID-19 data removals or NIH's conduct.
3. NIH satisfied FOIA's foreseeable-harm requirement by providing a specific declaration identifying the nature of the anticipated harassment and threats and linking those harms to the identifying information withheld.
4. NIH demonstrated with reasonable specificity that no additional information could be reasonably segregated and released without risking identification of the protected individuals.

Questions Presented

1. Whether NIH properly invoked FOIA Exemption 6 to withhold identifying information concerning researchers and NIH personnel associated with the BioSample and Sequence Read Archive databases.
2. Whether NIH demonstrated that disclosure would compromise substantial privacy interests and that those interests outweighed the public interest in disclosure.
3. Whether NIH reasonably foresaw harm from disclosure as required by FOIA.
4. Whether NIH released all reasonably segregable nonexempt information.

Disposition

other