The Center for Immigration Studies, or the Center, recently lost its attempt to recover attorney’s fees and costs after suing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Center did not “substantially prevail” in the case, meaning it wasn’t entitled to have its legal bills covered by the government.
The Initial FOIA Requests
The whole thing started back in July 2023. The Center submitted two FOIA requests to USCIS. These requests sought demographic information about people applying for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS). This status provides a path to immigration for young people who have been abused or neglected.
The first request, known as Request 5115, asked for details like the applicants’ citizenship, birth year, zip code, marital status, and current non-immigration status. The second request, Request 5116, sought reports, memos, and analyses related to the SIJS program.
USCIS acknowledged both requests and put them in the processing queue. However, when the Center checked on the status of Request 5115 in September 2023, it hadn’t moved forward. USCIS didn’t give an estimated completion time either.
The Lawsuit and the Government’s Response
With no progress, the Center filed a lawsuit in November 2023. A few months later, in February 2024, USCIS responded to Request 5115 by providing a massive spreadsheet containing thousands of SIJS applications from January 2015 to August 2023.
The spreadsheet included a column listing codes representing the applicants’ non-immigration status. For example, “EWI” might be used. The Center then asked USCIS to define these codes. After some discussions, USCIS provided a key, or data dictionary, explaining what each code meant in September 2024.
With the substantive differences resolved, the parties began settlement negotiations. They eventually agreed on everything except the issue of attorney’s fees and costs. The Center then filed a motion for attorney’s fees in March 2025, seeking over $51,000. USCIS opposed the request.
The Legal Standards for Attorney’s Fees
Under FOIA, a court “may assess against the United States reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred” if the complainant “substantially prevailed.” To win fees and costs, a plaintiff must first be eligible and then entitled to them.
Eligibility means the plaintiff either got relief through a court order or showed the lawsuit “caused a change in the agency’s position regarding the production of requested documents.” If a plaintiff is eligible, the court then looks at whether they “should” receive fees, considering factors like the public benefit of the case, any commercial benefit to the plaintiff, the nature of their interest in the records, and whether the agency’s withholding of the documents was reasonable.
The Court’s Reasoning
In this case, the court focused on whether the Center was eligible for fees. The Center argued it “substantially prevailed” because it got the records faster than it would have without the lawsuit and because it obtained more information than the agency initially produced. The court disagreed.
The court explained that to be eligible for fees without a court order, the Center had to show its lawsuit caused a change in USCIS’s position, known as the “catalyst theory.” This means the lawsuit had to be “necessary to ensure the agency’s compliance with FOIA.” The Center had to prove the lawsuit was the reason USCIS released the documents.
The court found the Center didn’t meet this burden. First, the court said the initial delay by USCIS in processing the FOIA requests wasn’t unusually long or unexplained. The court noted that delays are common in the FOIA process and that USCIS had a backlog of requests. The agency also had been working on the request before the lawsuit was filed.
Second, the court found insufficient evidence that USCIS “suddenly accelerated” its processing of the requests because of the lawsuit. The records were released three months after the lawsuit was filed. The court said it was “more likely” the documents would have been processed the same way regardless of the lawsuit.
The Center also argued that because another, earlier FOIA request took longer, the lawsuit must have sped things up. The court rejected this, saying one comparison wasn’t enough to show the lawsuit caused a change in the agency’s behavior.
Regarding the key to the non-immigrant status codes, the court also found the Center didn’t prove the lawsuit was the catalyst. The court noted that the key was provided after discussions between the parties, without court involvement. USCIS said it created the key to help with settlement discussions, not because of the lawsuit. The court concluded the connection between the lawsuit and the key’s release was “too attenuated.”
The court denied the Center’s motion for attorney’s fees and costs, finding the Center had not shown it “substantially prevailed.”