HHS Loses Fee Waiver Battle

Judge Reggie B. Walton of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia has granted the Center for Medicare Advocacy, Inc. a fee waiver in its FOIA request to Health and Human Services for information pertaining to information concerning video conferencing. . . that have been or are being reviewed and/or used in designing and/or establishing the Medicare administrative law judge hearings by [video-conferencing] that are described at 42 C.F.R. §§ 405.1036, et seq.

HHS had originally denied plaintiff's fee waiver request, but the Court disagreed and found that plaintiff had met the agency regulations for a fee waiver.  The government also denied thousands of pages pursuant to FOIA exemption 5 (the attorney-client privilege and the deliberative process privilege) but the Court found that the government met its burden of proof in establishing that this material was exempt from release.