Wright v. HHS, No. 22-1378, 2025 WL 2171090 (D.D.C. July 31, 2025) (Contreras, J.)

Wright v. HHS, No. 22-1378, 2025 WL 2171090 (D.D.C. July 31, 2025) (Contreras, J.)

Re: Request for records concerning COVID-19 vaccine safety studies

Disposition:  Granting defendant’s motion to extend stay; denying plaintiff’s motion

• Litigation Considerations, “Open America” Stays of Proceedings:  “The Court will . . . grant HHS’s motion to extend stay.”  “HHS argues that the FDA is entitled to extend the stay for an additional six months because active litigation in [Public Health & Medical Professionals for Transparency v. FDA, No. 21-cv-1058 (N.D. Tex.) (“PHMPT I”)] and [Public Health & Medical Professionals for Transparency v. FDA, No. 22-cv-0915 (N.D. Tex.) (“PHMPT II”)] has imposed ‘an extraordinary workload’ on FDA, and ‘FDA [has] experienced a significant reduction in force.’”  “The Court agrees.”  “First, the court-ordered productions in PHMPT I and PHMPT II – combined with [plaintiff’s] requests – created a volume of requests that vastly exceeded Congress’ expectations.”  “Here, the FDA received a request for ‘approximately 5.7 million pages of COVID-19 vaccine-related records’ which required FDA to ‘produce records at rates ranging from a total of 90,000 to 180,000 pages per month since July 2023.’”  “Second, the FDA did not have the adequate resources to deal with this excess of volume of requests.”  “During this request period, the FDA experienced a significant reduction in workforce that was unplanned.”  “HHS is entitled to a six-month extension of the stay because the FDA demonstrated that an exceptional circumstance existed and handled the request process diligently.”
   
• Litigation Considerations, Relief:  The court holds that “[plaintiff] is not entitled to request this Court to order President Trump’s political appointees to personally review his case and decide whether they would handle it differently than the previous administration.”  “Under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4), the only recourse that a district court can provide for [plaintiff] would be to enjoin the FDA from withholding the requested documents and assert reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs against HHS.” “Additionally, even if this Court can issue such an order, it would not do so.”  “Given the constitutionally required separation of powers of co-equal branches of government, the Court, absent compelling circumstances not present here, will not insert itself into the internal operations of an executive agency.”