The New York Times Company v. United States Department of Justice
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:25-cv-04199
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In New York Times v. DOJ, Judge McMahon received a joint request to pause scheduling while DOJ processed a records request.
The New York Times Company and the U.S. Department of Justice are affected by the requested changes to the case schedule and by the ongoing processing of the Freedom of Information Act request. The provided text does not show whether the court approved those requests.
What happened
The New York Times Company v. United States Department of Justice is a Freedom of Information Act case. The parties told the court that the Justice Department had issued a response to the newspaper’s March 20, 2025, records request and had released four pages with some information withheld.
The parties jointly asked to be excused from filing a case-management plan and attending the scheduled September 11, 2025, initial conference. They proposed filing either a voluntary dismissal or another status letter by August 8, 2025, depending on whether they resolved any remaining issues.
Judge Colleen McMahon’s ruling is not included in the provided text. The text is a joint status letter requesting the court’s approval, not an order granting or denying the request.
The detailed version
- The New York Times Company v. United States Department of Justice · No. 1:25-cv-04199
- Colleen McMahon
- July 8, 2025
Nature of the document
The provided text is a joint letter from the parties, not a judicial opinion or order. The letter was submitted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice and copied to plaintiffs’ counsel. It asks the court to excuse the parties from certain scheduling requirements, subject to the court’s approval.
Background
The New York Times Company brought the action under the Freedom of Information Act, a federal law that allows requests for records from federal agencies. The parties reported that they had discussed the status of the plaintiffs’ March 20, 2025, request to the Justice Department.
According to the letter, the Department’s Office of Information Policy issued a final response on July 3, 2025. It produced four pages of responsive material, with redactions—information withheld from disclosure—under Exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act, which is cited in the letter as 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6).
Requested case-management changes
The parties jointly asked to be relieved of the requirement to submit a Civil Case Management Plan by July 7, 2025, and to appear at the initial pretrial conference scheduled for September 11, 2025. They cited Local Civil Rule 16.1 and stated that cases involving review of administrative agencies, including Freedom of Information Act cases, are generally exempt from mandatory scheduling-order requirements. They also stated that such cases typically do not involve discovery and are resolved through summary judgment, a procedure in which the court decides whether a trial is necessary based on the materials submitted.
The parties proposed submitting either a stipulation of voluntary dismissal or a joint status letter by August 8, 2025. That filing would report their progress in resolving the request and identify any disputes requiring court intervention if the parties could not resolve them informally.
Disposition
The provided text does not state that Judge Colleen McMahon granted or denied the requested scheduling relief, entered a dismissal, or otherwise ruled on the case. It therefore does not contain a court disposition to summarize.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.