IT IS ORDERED that the April 15, 2025, and May 20, 2025 orders of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, case No. 25-cv-511, are hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.
— Misc. Order 2025-05-23
This case is about slowing down DOGE and the Trump administration. The tool used in this case is Freedom Of Information Act requests for information, otherwise known as FOIA requests.
The name of the organization is, normally, CREW. They started requesting information in December 2024, through the OMB attempting to find out who and what DOGE was. When they had not received a response by January 2025, they requested an expedited FOIA. They filed more FOIA requests and more demands for expedited actions.
On February 20, 2025, they filed suit, alleging that the government wasn’t responding fast enough. They wanted a preliminary injunction requiring full compliance with their request by March 10th.
By March 10th, the court had ordered the government to produce the requested documents in an expedited manner. It looks like court speak of “ASAP”.
By the middle of April, they had a requirement in place for the government to produce 1000 documents per month. Note, OMB believes there are around 108,000 documents and DOGE believes they have 58,000. This is a total of 166,000 documents.
The government has nearly 15 years to produce all the documents requested.
Ok. That’s where things stood as of April 10, 2025.
The government filed a request for stay with the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Roberts then issued an administrative stay. This means that OMB and DOGE can proceed with document production at a “normal” rate.
Since it is an administrative stay, only a single justice is needed. The entire court can then choose to examine the case and issue an order regarding the request for stay, or they can just leave the administrative stay in place.
It seems a small win, but it is a win.
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