Products Liability Law Daily Wrap Up, INFORMATION DISCLOSURE—MOTOR VEHICLES—D.D.C.: Federal court partially grants Washington Post's FOIA challenge over Tesla crash data, (Mar 30, 2026)

By Wendy Biddle, J.D.

NHTSA must justify withholding autonomous vehicle crash information from other manufacturers.

A federal district court in Washington D.C. issued a split decision in Washington Post's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking unredacted crash data about vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems, finding that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration adequately justified withholding certain Tesla information but failed to carry its burden regarding data from other manufacturers (WP Company LLC, d/b/a The Washington Post v. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, No. 1:24-cv-01353-TSC (D.D.C. Mar. 25, 2026)).

Background. The case stemmed from NHTSA's Standing General Order issued in April 2023, which requires automobile manufacturers to report vehicle crashes occurring when autonomous technology is used at the time of a crash or shortly before. The agency compiles these reports into a publicly available spreadsheet but permits manufacturers to request confidential treatment for three specific categories: hardware and software versions of automated driving technology, whether vehicles were within their operational design domain at the time of crashes, and narrative descriptions of accidents.

In May 2023, the Post submitted a FOIA request seeking the agency's Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems incident report data in unredacted format. NHTSA issued a partial response in January 2024, withholding the three categories under Exemption 4 as trade secrets and commercial or financial information, and withholding precise crash locations under Exemption 6 to protect personal privacy. The Post appealed and subsequently filed suit.

Exemption 4: confidential treatment. The court's analysis turned heavily on the Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, which established that information qualifies as "confidential" under Exemption 4 if it is "customarily and actually treated as private by its owner." The court found significant deficiencies in NHTSA's justification for withholding information from manufacturers other than Tesla.

The court rejected the agency's reliance on conclusory statements that reporting entities submitted information under a framework providing confidentiality assurances. The court emphasized that agencies cannot simply rely on confidential treatment requests and approvals as self-justifying. The court explained that accepting such circular reasoning would allow any agency to avoid judicial review by distributing promises of confidentiality, and that courts must conduct de novo review of whether information was properly withheld.

The court noted that NHTSA failed to provide entity-specific evidence about how individual manufacturers other than Tesla actually and customarily treat their version data, operational design domain information, and crash narratives as private. The agency's declaration lacked specificity about which manufacturers submitted confidential treatment requests and how those particular entities handle such information.

By contrast, the court found Tesla's declarations sufficient. Tesla's Director for Field Reliability Engineering provided detailed attestations that the company customarily treats all three categories as technical and proprietary information, does not publicly disclose such data in ordinary business operations, restricts employee access through non-disclosure agreements and security protocols, and consistently seeks confidential treatment when submitting reports to NHTSA.

The court addressed the Post's argument that Tesla's version data cannot be confidential because individual Tesla drivers can access their own vehicle's software version through phone applications or touchscreens. The court sided with the defendants, explaining that the relevant inquiry focuses on whether aggregated safety data connecting specific versions to crashes is kept private, not whether isolated data points might be accessible to individual consumers. The court analogized to precedent holding that products sold on the open market do not render information about those products' characteristics over time publicly available.

However, the court identified a material factual dispute regarding Tesla's operational design domain information. Given Tesla's representation that its operational design domain encompasses essentially any roadway in America, and the Post's observation that responses to the "Within ODD?" field could only be "Yes," "No, see Narrative," or "Unknown, see Narrative," the court found insufficient evidence linking disclosure of this limited information to foreseeable competitive harm.

Foreseeable harm standard. Under the FOIA Improvement Act, agencies may only withhold information if they reasonably foresee that disclosure would harm a protected interest. The court found Tesla adequately demonstrated that disclosure of version data would allow competitors to assess system efficacy, calculate crash rates per system, track Tesla's rate of progress, and potentially disparage Tesla based on crash information tied to specific versions.

Similarly, the court accepted Tesla's explanation that narrative disclosures would reveal Tesla's crash investigation processes, data collection methodologies, and system strengths and weaknesses, thereby enabling competitors to improve their own products. The court rejected the Post's argument that cognizable harms must flow only from competitors' affirmative use of proprietary information, noting that post-Argus Leader jurisprudence recognizes broader economic and business harms, including those affecting customer relations.

Exemption 6: privacy. The court found genuine disputes of material fact regarding NHTSA's withholding of precise crash locations—latitude, longitude, address, and zip code—under Exemption 6, which protects against clearly unwarranted invasions of personal privacy. While acknowledging that privacy interests exist, the court questioned their strength given that crash information may already be publicly available through law enforcement reports or news coverage.

The court noted that under ACLU v. Department of Justice precedent, privacy interests are diminished when the information sought is already freely available to the public. Because NHTSA's only articulated method for identifying individuals from the spreadsheet data requires accessing information already in the public domain, the privacy interest appeared "at most, barely greater than de minimis."

Against this uncertain privacy interest, the court weighed the Post's articulated public interest in assessing the accuracy of crash reporting and evaluating NHTSA's performance of its statutory duty to reduce traffic accidents, particularly given the rapid evolution of autonomous vehicle technology.

The court denied both parties' summary judgment motions on Exemption 6 issues, finding the record insufficient to determine the incremental privacy interest in the withheld location data or to properly balance privacy against public interests. The court permitted the defendants to supplement their declarations addressing the court's concerns regarding both exemptions.

The case is No. 1:24-cv-01353-TSC.

Judge: Chutkan, T.

Attorneys: Charles D. Tobin (Ballard Spahr LLP) for WP Co. LLC d/b/a Washington Post. Kartik Narayan Venguswamy (ArentFox Schiff LLP) for National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Companies: WP Co. LLC d/b/a Washington Post; National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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