Gun Owners of America v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives

Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

Date Filed: Nov. 13, 2025

Background: In 2021, Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for records related to the agency’s use of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. 

After the ATF failed to produce responsive records, the gun-rights groups sued the agency. The lawsuit prompted the ATF to turn over documents, but in the final production, the agency inadvertently released some information that it believed was exempt from disclosure under FOIA. The ATF demanded that the organizations delete the mistakenly disclosed records, but they refused to do so. 

At the agency’s request, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia entered an order prohibiting the gun-rights groups from disseminating or disclosing the inadvertently released information. The D.C. Circuit had recently held that a trial court does not possess inherent authority to enter such an order in a FOIA case, but the district court here ruled that it still possesses equitable authority to do so, in part because the records at issue were properly exempt from disclosure under FOIA, and that the case “does not present an unconstitutional prior restraint.”

The gun-rights groups appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Our Position: In a friend-of-the-court brief joined by 25 news and media organizations, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press urges the D.C. Circuit to vacate the district court’s prior restraint.

• The district court order imposes an unconstitutional prior restraint that must be vacated.

• Allowing clawbacks of records released during public records litigation would disincentivize timely, pre-litigation compliance with FOIA requests. And journalists may be dissuaded from pursuing important accountability journalism in the public interest by the prospect of being restrained by court order from publishing information the government released (inadvertently or not) under FOIA and that it later decides should have been withheld. 

• Agency efforts to restrict dissemination of records released under FOIA are increasing and jeopardize reporting in the public interest.

From the Brief: “If agencies can obtain court orders requiring news organizations to destroy or refrain from disseminating information they lawfully obtained from the agency under FOIA by claiming the information was ‘inadvertently’ disclosed and could have been withheld pursuant to a FOIA exemption, agencies will gain a tool that lies outside both the Act and the Constitution to stifle the press — a tool that they have over at least the last decade shown a desire to have.”

Related: In January 2025, the D.C. Circuit vacated a district court ruling in a FOIA lawsuit preventing the dissemination of records that had been inadvertently released by the U.S. Park Police. A media coalition led by the Reporters Committee had urged the appeals court to reach that decision, arguing that the lower court’s ruling imposed an unconstitutional prior restraint.