Court says DOJ’s 18-month LinkedIn metadata demand was substantially overbroad

A federal appeals court ordered the Justice Department to narrow an 18-month demand for journalists’ LinkedIn metadata, holding that the order reached far beyond what the government had shown was relevant to a classified-information disclosure. The unanimous Fourth Circuit panel’s November 10 ruling called the disclosure order “substantially overbroad” and sent it back to the district court.

The government sought records under the Stored Communications Act showing the sender, recipient, date and time of LinkedIn connections and messages involving the targeted journalists. It did not seek message contents. The court said the journalists published nearly 1,000 stories during the period, while fewer than 5% appeared related to the classified-disclosure investigation.

That mismatch carried a source-protection consequence. The order would identify every person who corresponded with the journalists through LinkedIn during the 18 months, including confidential sources for stories unrelated to the suspected leak. The panel said national-security deference does not remove the statutory requirement for specific and articulable facts showing that demanded records are relevant and material to an investigation.

The panel also narrowed a one-year secrecy order that barred LinkedIn from telling the journalists, their outlet, or anyone other than its counsel about the demand. Calling that restraint a prior restraint on speech, the court said the district judge must consider less restrictive alternatives. Unless the government supplies a better reason on remand, the panel said LinkedIn’s proposal to notify one vetted attorney for the unnamed outlet should be adopted.

The ruling did not end the classified-disclosure investigation or quash the records demand. The panel described the national-security interest as self-evidently strong, accepted that some overbreadth can be unavoidable early in an investigation, and said the government remains entitled to a broad order. It also upheld the district court’s refusal to disclose the government’s sealed submissions because revealing them could jeopardize the investigation.

The accountability question is why the Justice Department sought records capable of exposing professional and confidential-source relationships across almost 1,000 stories when fewer than 5% appeared connected to the classified-information inquiry—and why the district court approved that sweep without measuring how much irrelevant material it captured. The appeals court’s answer was not to halt the inquiry, but to require a judge to draw a defensible relevance line.

The opinion does not identify the outlet, the journalists, the leaked information, or the exact dates of the original orders. It makes no finding of retaliatory motive or bad faith. On remand, the district court must narrow the disclosure order and reconsider the secrecy order under the appellate court’s instructions.