The New York Times Company v. United States Defense Counterintelligence and…
The New York Times Company v. United States Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency
- Denise Cote
- 1:25-cv-02333
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In The New York Times Company and Neil Bedi v. U.S. Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, Judge Cote received a joint scheduling proposal; no ruling appears.
The New York Times Company, Neil Bedi, and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency are directly affected by the proposed schedule and related requests. The requested disclosure concerns records about Elon Musk’s security clearances.
What happened
The New York Times Company and Neil Bedi v. U.S. Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency is a Freedom of Information Act case about records concerning Elon Musk’s security clearances. The agency said it found two responsive pages and withheld them in full under privacy exemptions.
The parties jointly proposed deciding the case through written summary-judgment motions, with briefing scheduled from May 30 through August 8, 2025. They also asked to postpone the government’s deadline to respond to the complaint and cancel the initial case-management conference.
The filing does not show that the court granted or denied these requests. Judge Denise L. Cote is the judge identified in the filing.
The detailed version
- The New York Times Company v. United States Defense Counterintelligence and… · No. 1:25-cv-02333
- Denise Cote
- Apr. 29, 2025
Nature of the filing
The supplied text is a joint letter to the court, not a ruling. The parties asked the court to set a schedule for cross-motions for summary judgment, postpone the government’s deadline to answer or otherwise respond to the complaint, and cancel the initial case-management conference.
Background
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), an agency within the Department of Defense, conducts background investigations and adjudicates applications for federal security clearances. In September 2024, The New York Times Company and Neil Bedi submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for “a list of security clearances for Elon Musk, including the extent and purview of each of the clearances.”
DCSA reported that it had identified two pages of responsive records. It withheld both pages in full under the Freedom of Information Act’s privacy exemptions 6 and 7(C). The plaintiffs appealed administratively, but DCSA denied the appeal and later denied a request for reconsideration.
Requests to the court
The parties stated that the only issue was whether the two pages were exempt from disclosure. They proposed resolving that issue through cross-motions for summary judgment, which are competing requests for judgment based on the written record rather than a trial. Their proposed briefing schedule was:
- The government’s opening papers: May 30,
- - The plaintiffs’ opposition and any cross-motion: June 27,
- - The government’s opposition and reply: July 18,
- - The plaintiffs’ reply: August 8, 2025.
The government also asked, with the plaintiffs’ consent, to postpone its April 30 deadline to answer or otherwise respond to the complaint until after any summary-judgment decision, unless the case was resolved earlier or the court ordered a different date. The parties further asked the court to cancel the initial case-management conference scheduled for May 23, 2025, at 2:30 p.m.
Disposition
The supplied text contains no order granting or denying the proposed schedule, postponement, or conference cancellation. Judge Denise L. Cote is identified as the presiding judge.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.