MFIA Secures Settlement Committing State Department to Address FOIA Backlog

Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access (MFIA) Clinic has secured a settlement with the U.S. Department of State designed to improve the agency’s processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. 

Under the settlement, the State Department has agreed to an audit of its FOIA processing by the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), which will identify ways to revamp State’s operations to address its yearslong backlog. The Department is required to take all reasonable steps to address OGIS’s recommendations, including by requesting the funds necessary to do so. 

The agreement resolves Scoville v. U.S. Department of State, a lawsuit brought by MFIA on behalf of Marquette University law professor Ryan Scoville. Although the case began with disputes over records Scoville needed for his research, the settlement provides broader relief intended to produce structural change at the agency that could benefit thousands of researchers, journalists, advocates, and other members of the public who need timely access to State Department records.

Clinical Lecturer Stacy Livingston, who supervised the student team handling the Scoville litigation in recent semesters alongside former Clinical Lecturer Tobin Raju, celebrated the settlement agreement and the positive effect it should have on State’s FOIA backlog. 

“FOIA gives the public a right to know what the government is doing in the name of the people, and this settlement represents a big win for FOIA requestors,” Livingston explained. “But we hope it’ll represent a big win for the State Department, too, ushering in an era of faster processing and greater transparency.” 

State’s FOIA processing has long been plagued by issues and delays. In 2016, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform deemed it “arguably the worst agency with respect to FOIA compliance.” In 2024, bipartisan congressional leaders called for faster processing after a GAO report identified State among five agencies responsible for 80% of the federal FOIA backlog. The settlement concludes more than four years of intense litigation over the agency’s chronic delays.

From One Request to a Systemic Challenge

In March 2020, Scoville asked the State Department for reports concerning the use and transfer of American military equipment. FOIA generally requires agencies to make an initial determination within 20 business days, but Scoville waited nearly a year without receiving a substantive response. When the Department finally provided an update in March 2021, it estimated that it would not complete his request until March 8, 2023, more than three years after he had submitted it.

The experience was familiar to Scoville, whose research focuses on U.S. foreign relations law, international law, and the domestic laws governing American diplomacy. Between 2014 and 2021, he submitted six FOIA requests to the State Department concerning ambassadorial nominees, military-equipment transfers, and congressional diplomatic communications. According to MFIA’s lawsuit, the Department failed to respond to each request within the time or manner required by law. One 2018 request, for example, took nearly two years and a lawsuit to resolve, at the end of which State produced a single record. 

“Good scholarship depends on evidence, and in foreign-relations law the public legal authorities often tell only part of the story,” Scoville said. “Government records are frequently indispensable to understanding how the law works in practice. The State Department’s years-long delays forced me to frame arguments and prepare scholarship for publication on the basis of an incomplete and outdated record. I pursued this case because transparency that arrives too late is often far less valuable.”

In January 2022, MFIA sued the State Department on Scoville’s behalf, seeking the records requested in his still-outstanding requests and broader relief for the Department’s repeated FOIA delays. After the court rejected the Department’s effort to dismiss the broader claim, the case moved into discovery.

Over the next two years, MFIA students reviewed thousands of records, prepared document requests and written questions, and helped depose two officials responsible for the Department’s FOIA program. In February 2025, the clinic asked the court to rule in Scoville’s favor.

“This settlement is the first of its kind. And it was possible because of excellent work from clinic students and supervisors across several semesters. They pored over complicated fact and expert discovery to identify the holes in the State Department’s FOIA processing,” Raju said. “The team developed a compelling legal framework to analyze these novel claims, which played a major role in this great result.”

Addressing the Backlog

The State Department has long maintained one of the federal government’s largest FOIA backlogs. At the end of fiscal year 2020, the Department reported nearly 14,000 backlogged requests. By fiscal year 2025, it accounted for approximately 8% of all backlogged FOIA requests across the federal government, placing it among the five agencies with the largest backlogs.

Those delays can erode the value of information by the time it is released. Records about government decisions may be significantly less useful to researchers, journalists, and the public when they arrive years after the underlying decisions were made.

The settlement seeks to address that problem with assistance from OGIS, an independent office within the National Archives and Records Administration that serves as the federal FOIA ombudsman. OGIS works with requesters and agencies to resolve disputes, evaluates agency compliance with FOIA, and identifies ways to improve the administration of the law.

By agreeing to seek OGIS’s help and take all reasonable steps to address its recommendations, the State Department has committed to a process focused on the underlying operation of its FOIA system. The changes OGIS suggests will benefit all FOIA requestors, not just Scoville. 

“OGIS is well-positioned to provide the type of independent, systematic review the Department of State requires,”  said A.Jay Wagner, an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Marquette University who served as an expert for Scoville in the case. “The office’s broad scope and years of experience reviewing federal FOIA processes will benefit the Department of State and, ultimately, the public. OGIS has the expertise to provide the kind of guidance that can produce meaningful change.”

A Case Built Across Generations at the Clinic

The settlement is the culmination of work carried forward by successive groups of MFIA students, faculty, and fellows. Students particularly involved in the case include Arjun Malik ’24, Dorrin Akbari ’24, Andrew Rikard ’25, Noah Kim ’25, Ben Menke ’25, Anna Selbrede ’26, and Andrea DenHoed ’26. Over several years, students worked on every stage of the case, from legal research and briefing to discovery and depositions.

“I worked on the Scoville case for four semesters and was involved in nearly every part of discovery,” Menke said. “The case was unique because it addressed the mechanics of the FOIA system itself and required an insider’s view of how the law is administered. Its resolution reflects years of work by many clinic teams, and I’m hopeful it will bring the State Department closer to compliance with FOIA.”

The litigation also inspired scholarship about the potential of policy-or-practice claims. Selbrede and DenHoed drew on their work in the case to examine how such claims can expand FOIA relief beyond disclosure to an individual requester and address the issues that prevent timely access to public information.

Their research won first place in a national competition organized by the University of Florida’s Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project in connection with FOIA’s 60th anniversary. The paper is forthcoming in the Journal of Civic Information.

“Policy-or-practice FOIA claims can be powerful, but they can also be difficult to conceptualize and articulate,” Selbrede said. “Andrea and I often remarked during the Scoville litigation that we wished there were a written primer on the topic, and we are so excited that we can publish one ourselves. The Scoville settlement just underscores the potential for big outcomes from a policy-or-practice claim.”

For the students and attorneys who worked on Scoville, the settlement closes a case that began with one scholar waiting years for public records. Its potential impact, however, extends to anyone who depends on timely access to information about government foreign-policy decisions, according to the clinic.