Democrat Senators Ron Wyden and Adam Schiff say the Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret surveillance-court ruling that faulted how intelligence analysts search Americans' messages, while pressing Congress to renew the program the ruling covers. The two lawmakers laid out the charge in a demand letter first reported by WIRED.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued the opinion on March 17, according to Nextgov. It objected to search filters that let analysts pull Americans' communications out of intercepted data without the approvals, written justifications and records the law requires, WIRED reports, and then approved another year of Section 702 surveillance anyway. The law gives the government 180 days to review a ruling like this for public release. That window closed September 13. The administration's own guidance says the same.
The senators want an explanation for the delay, and the names of the officials responsible, by November 6. "If this administration won't follow this simple statutory directive," they wrote to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche, "it is unclear why Congress or the American people should trust this administration to follow any of the other legal limits to Section 702." The letter is dated Monday, and Demand Progress and 22 other groups, from the ACLU to a conservative-backed privacy group, urged congressional leaders not to renew the program while the ruling stays buried.
It is not the first deadline to pass. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton and Vice Chairman Mark Warner asked the administration in April to release the opinion within 15 days. Demand Progress said in May that the 15 days came and went with nothing declassified.
Blanche was asked in writing in July whether he would commit to declassifying it by the 180-day mark. His answer, in his written responses, was "Yes." Clayton, who as DNI is legally responsible, has made no such promise. Before his confirmation he said only that the government was "working arduously to expeditiously declassify" the opinion and had given the full text to lawmakers. Warner's office told WIRED he expects Clayton to declassify it, as required by law. Cotton's office did not respond, and the White House, the DNI's office and the Justice Department did not answer WIRED's questions.
The opinion is still secret, but pieces of it have leaked. The New York Times reported in April that the court found the tools agencies use to narrow intercepted data to an American's messages amount to searches of Americans, subject to the same limits, and ordered them rebuilt. Nextgov said it could not independently confirm that account. Administration talking points sent to lawmakers said only that the court found the proposed approach "could present deficiencies." Senator Alex Padilla has said the Justice Department is appealing portions of the ruling that limit its use of certain filtering tools.
The ruling has a history. A declassified 2025 court opinion described a similar FBI tool that let agents select people in contact with surveillance targets and read their messages. The Justice Department told the court in February 2025 that searches through it had gone uncounted, and the FBI switched it off, then back on later in the year with a rebuilt version.
The report also notes that seven intelligence-agency fact sheets issued in March, one dated the day of the ruling, cited a 98.9 percent compliance rate for FBI searches of Americans and never mention the court's findings. The figure does not appear in the Justice Department inspector general's review, which put compliance at 98.6 percent and said it could not conclude the FBI's compliance problems were "entirely in the past." The same fact sheets say FBI auditors review every search of Americans, WIRED reports, while FBI Director Kash Patel closed the bureau's Office of Internal Auditing last May.
Lawmakers who have read the ruling say it matters. Senator Dick Durbin told colleagues on the Senate floor in June that once they read it, "your opinion of the role of FISA and the rights of Americans will be impacted for sure." Wyden has said that when a separate classified interpretation of Section 702 is finally declassified, "the American people are going to be stunned that it took so long."
The program itself lapsed in June after Congress failed to renew it, though collection continues under the court's March approval, which runs to next March. Trump said earlier that he would not approve FISA without the SAVE America Act going along with it, and intelligence officials are now pressing lawmakers to renew Section 702 by year-end. Reform advocates expect the administration to try to attach a renewal to the annual defense bill, which Congress usually finishes in December, as lawmakers did in 2023. The administration has until November 6 to answer the senators.