Rodriguez v. FTC, No. 25-2401, 2026 WL 2349862 (D.D.C. Aug. 13, 2026) (Alikhan, J.)

Rodriguez v. FTC, No. 25-2401, 2026 WL 2349862 (D.D.C. Aug. 13, 2026) (Alikhan, J.)

Re: Request for records concerning plaintiff, as well as several large social media companies

Disposition:  Denying plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment; granting plaintiff’s cross-motion for summary judgment

• Fees and Fee Waivers, Fee Waivers:  The court notes that “[t]he parties agree that [plaintiff’s] requested records would shed light on the operations or activities of the government.”  However, the court finds that “[plaintiff] fails to demonstrate that he intends to disseminate the requested records, so disclosure is not likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the FTC’s operations and activities.”  “Put another way, even assuming that disclosure of the requested information could advance the public’s understanding of the FTC’s operations, [plaintiff] has provided no information about his ‘ability [or] intention to effectively convey or disseminate the requested information to the public.’” “Indeed, he alleged in his FOIA request and appeal that he would use the requested records in his own civil suit, . . . and he did not mention any plans to disseminate the requested information to anyone, let alone a ‘reasonably broad audience of persons interested in the subject[]’ . . . .”  “Additionally, while the court’s review is ‘limited to the record before the agency,’ . . . [plaintiff’s] filings in this court also fail to identify or substantiate any intent or ability to convey the requested records to the public.”  “[Plaintiff] has thus failed to ‘state his “ability and intention” to disseminate the requested information to the public, which “alone [provides] a sufficient basis for denying the fee waiver request.”’”
   
• Procedural Requirements, Searching for Responsive Records: The court notes that, “[n]otwithstanding his failure to pay any fees, [plaintiff] was entitled to two hours of search time and up to 100 pages of duplication at no charge under the FTC’s FOIA regulations.”  “The FTC acknowledged this entitlement in its letter denying his request for a fee waiver, but it stated that his FOIA request was ‘seeking over 10 years of material related to Meta, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and [two hours] would be insufficient to process this request.’”  “The FTC accordingly closed [plaintiff’s] request after he failed to indicate whether he would enter into a fee agreement after his fee-waiver request was denied or narrow his request such that it could be processed within two hours.”  “The FTC contends that it was not required to conduct a search in response to [plaintiff’s] FOIA request because the request does not reasonably describe the records sought, . . . would require an unreasonably burdensome search . . . and would require overly burdensome post-search efforts . . . .”  “The court agrees that [plaintiff’s] request would require an unreasonably burdensome search far exceeding his two hours of free search time, so the FTC was under no obligation to conduct a search or produce responsive records.”  “The FTC has sufficiently established that [plaintiff’s] FOIA request would require an unreasonably burdensome search.”  “The agency provides declarations . . . which detail the time and resources that a search for responsive records would require.”  “The first part of [plaintiff’s] FOIA request seeks ‘all records . . . concerning . . . [c]onsumer complaints or FTC investigations regarding Meta Platforms, Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp involving biometric profiling, behavioral surveillance, or audio/video recording without consent.’” “[Defendant] explains that consumers are unlikely to use the terms ‘biometric profiling,’ ‘behavioral surveillance,’ and ‘audio/video recording without consent’ in their complaints to the FTC, which makes it difficult for the agency to design search terms to identify responsive records.”  “Accordingly, FTC employees would need to ‘manually review each of the 115,249 complaints’ relating to the four companies in the relevant period to determine responsiveness and then redact any personally identifying information from responsive records.”  “[Defendant] estimates that this process would take approximately 5,762 hours.” “As for records of investigations – which [plaintiff] directly seeks in his first request and which relate to his fourth request for records concerning ‘[e]nforcement actions, proposed or closed, against Meta, Facebook, or Instagram, for background surveillance, predictive tracking, or dark patterns that resulted in reputational harm to consumers,’ – [defendant] explains that the FTC conducts both formal and informal investigative work, and the agency ‘has no centralized system to search for such informal investigative work by involved parties or subject matter[]’ . . . .” “[Plaintiff’s] first request for records concerning ‘FTC investigations’ and his fourth request for records concerning ‘[e]nforcement actions, proposed or closed,’ would thus require the FTC to search for records in virtually every part of the agency where records related to enforcement activity exist.”  “Similarly, [defendant] states that responding to the third part of the request – for records concerning ‘FTC reports or internal documents referencing’ [plaintiff] . . . – ‘would require a search by nearly every office in the agency’ because the FTC ‘does not maintain a centralized repository for records[]’ . . . .”  “These sweeping agency-wide searches would require far more than a ‘reasonable amount of effort.’”  “[Defendant] also estimates that searching for records responsive to the second part of [plaintiff’s] request for ‘[i]nternal memoranda or staff guidance regarding persistent telemetry, Custom Audience targeting, or data harvesting SDKs operating on Apple iOS devices,’ . . . would require at least 3,520 hours . . . .” “He reached this ‘extremely conservative’ estimate . . . by speaking with employees in two FTC offices, and he confirmed that employees would need to search numerous different storage systems and communication channels, including emails, Teams, filing cabinets, and off-site storage facilities . . . .”  “According to [defendant], at least fourteen divisions of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection perform work related to targeted advertising, and a search for responsive records ‘would involve every attorney, or nearly every attorney’ in those divisions – more than 200 attorneys in total, with each searching for at least sixteen hours.”  “Finally, the fifth part of [plaintiff’s] request seeks records concerning ‘[a]ny third-party data broker disclosures, FTC complaints, or redress efforts involving unauthorized Custom Audience inclusion or inferred targeting of [plaintiff].’”  “[Defendant] states that ‘a search for documents on any of these topics that could possibly show targeting of [plaintiff] would be looking for a needle in the haystack.’”  “As with the other parts of his request, [plaintiff] does not identify any locations where records are likely to be found or other custodial limitations.” “In sum, [plaintiff’s] ‘failure to identify which record system to search or which office might maintain responsive records would require the agency to conduct searches agency-wide, a process which would exceed the two (2) hours search afforded’ to [plaintiff] free of charge.”
  
  “[Plaintiff] provides no meaningful response to the FTC’s arguments, instead asserting that the FTC ‘construe[d] [his] request in the broadest possible way’ and that its declarations fail to show ‘why more targeted approaches could not substantially reduce the burden.’”  “But the FTC was required to read his request ‘as drafted, not as either agency officials or [the requester] might wish it was drafted.’” “[Plaintiff] cannot reduce the burden created by his request now by seeking ‘a narrower date range’ or searches of ‘more manageable segments.’”  “Regardless, ‘it is highly unlikely that even the type of search that [plaintiff] suggests could be accomplished within the two-hour limit.’”
   
• Procedural Requirements, Expedited Processing:  The court holds that, “[i]n light of the court’s conclusion that [plaintiff] did not submit a proper FOIA request, [plaintiff] argument that the FTC erred in denying his request for expedited processing is moot.”  “Here, the FTC was not required to respond to [plaintiff’s] request, so ‘[t]here is nothing more to expedite.’”  “In any event, [plaintiff] failed to show a compelling need for expedited processing.”  “[Plaintiff’s] alleged risk of ‘reputational and privacy-based injury,’ . . . and his desire to obtain records for his civil lawsuit, . . . do not satisfy either standard.”