Deciding What Government Records the Public Can See

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No single office decides which government records the public can see. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), each federal agency answers requests for the records it holds. The law does not reach Congress, the federal courts or state and local governments. Court records, presidential records and classified files each follow separate rules.

For agency records, release is the starting duty. The law has nine exemptions, for material such as classified information and private personal details, but an agency has to take reasonable steps to release the unprotected parts of a record. Agencies received a record 1,707,197 requests in fiscal year 2025. The law’s deadline of 20 working days is for a decision, not for delivering the documents.

Who holds the record decides how to ask for it

Each federal department or agency responds to requests for its own records; there is no central office handling every request, the Department of Justice (DOJ) explains in its FOIA reference guide. The law covers executive-branch agency records, but not records held by Congress, federal courts, presidential advisory offices, state or local governments, or private businesses and individuals. State and local records are governed by state access laws, according to the department’s guide.

For an agency file, start with the agency’s FOIA office; for a court filing, start with the court’s records system.

Release is the starting duty, with specific limits

An agency must make records promptly available to anyone whose request reasonably describes them and follows the agency’s published procedures. The statute also requires agencies to make some records available electronically without a request: final opinions and orders in cases the agency decides, adopted policy interpretations, staff instructions affecting the public, and certain previously released records. Previously released records must be posted when the agency expects repeated requests for substantially the same material or when the records have been requested at least three times. That is why looking for a copy already posted in the agency’s online reading room can be more useful than beginning with a new request.

The statute has nine exemptions, covering such material as properly classified information, protected personal information, confidential business information and privileged agency communications. Other exemptions cover internal personnel rules, information protected by qualifying nondisclosure statutes, specified law-enforcement harms, financial-institution supervisory records and geological information about wells.

An exemption identifies a legally protected interest; it is not a general permission to refuse embarrassing questions about government. An agency may withhold under FOIA only when it reasonably foresees harm to an interest protected by an exemption or when disclosure is prohibited by law.

The agency must take reasonable steps to separate and release information that is not exempt. Released records generally must indicate the amount deleted and the exemption used, unless that indication would itself harm a protected interest. The question to press is whether the hidden portion is protected and whether the rest can be understood and released separately.

Privacy and open investigations can still block release

The statute protects personnel, medical and similar files against a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy, and law-enforcement records against an unwarranted invasion of privacy. The Supreme Court recognized in 1989 a substantial privacy interest in compiled criminal histories, or rap sheets, even when the individual pieces had previously been public, the Justice Department’s FOIA guide notes. Scattered information and a ready-made dossier are different kinds of exposure, which helps explain why prior publicity does not settle every privacy question.

When a request seeks law-enforcement records about a living third party, DOJ says it will in almost all cases neither confirm nor deny that such records exist. In that setting, confirming the existence of a file can be the disclosure the agency is trying to avoid. Such information is released without that person’s consent only when no privacy interest would be invaded or a strong public interest outweighs the individual’s privacy interest. A requester may get greater access by submitting that person’s signed authorization or proof that the person has died, the department says.

Law-enforcement withholding can also protect proceedings from interference, preserve a fair trial, protect confidential sources and investigative methods, or prevent danger to an individual’s life or physical safety. Those are distinct grounds, so the end of an investigation does not logically remove every privacy or safety concern within its records. Other laws add their own protections: a separate federal statute requires people working on a criminal case, including government employees, court employees and the defense, to keep documents identifying a child in a secure place and disclose that information only to participants with a reason to know it.

Write a request for records that can be found

FOIA.gov advises searching agency websites and already posted information before submitting a request. A request must be in writing and reasonably describe the records, and most federal agencies accept electronic requests. There is no single required FOIA request form.

Name the office and the records sought, and use a defined subject and time period where they help identify the material. For example, requesting correspondence about a named agency decision asks for a record; asking why the decision was bad asks the agency for an explanation. FOIA does not require an agency to create records, conduct research, analyze data or answer questions.

DOJ allows a requester to discuss the desired records with a FOIA contact or public liaison before filing. That conversation can help turn a broad concern into a request the agency can actually search. For someone requesting their own DOJ records, the department requires identity verification through a notarized statement or a statement signed under penalty of perjury; its Form DOJ-361 is one option.

A response deadline is not a delivery promise

The ordinary statutory deadline for an initial determination is 20 days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal public holidays. The federal appeals court for the District of Columbia has held that a timely determination need not include the documents themselves but must indicate which records the agency will produce and which exemptions it claims, DOJ’s procedural guide explains. An acknowledgment is not the same thing as that decision, and the decision is not the same thing as receiving the files.

In unusual circumstances, an agency can extend the deadline by written notice that gives the reason and the expected decision date, ordinarily by no more than 10 working days. The qualifying circumstances include records at separate locations, a large volume of distinct records, or necessary consultation with another agency or component. When the request cannot be processed within that extended period, the agency must offer an opportunity to narrow it or arrange an alternative processing time frame. A narrower request can address a workload problem without conceding that the underlying records are exempt.

Faster processing is available to a requester who shows a compelling need. The statute defines that as an imminent threat to an individual’s life or physical safety or, for a requester primarily engaged in disseminating information, urgency to inform the public about federal government activity. The agency must decide whether to grant expedited processing and provide notice within 10 calendar days of the request, then process an approved expedited request as soon as practicable. A compelling-need request must include a statement certified true and correct to the best of the requester’s knowledge and belief. A subject’s popularity is different from showing the qualifying urgency.

Commercial-use requesters can be charged for search, duplication and review. Educational and noncommercial scientific institutions and news-media requesters are charged only for duplication, while other requesters pay for search and duplication. For ordinary noncommercial requests, the first two hours of search and first 100 pages of duplication are free. Fees are waived or reduced when disclosure is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of government operations or activities and is not primarily in the requester’s commercial interest.

DOJ reports that federal agencies received a record high of 1,707,197 FOIA requests in fiscal year 2025. The Government Accountability Office reports that agency FOIA officers cited increasing request complexity, staffing challenges and increasing litigation as causes of growing backlogs. Those pressures help explain why the legal response clock and the time spent searching and reviewing records can diverge.

How to challenge a denial

A requester can appeal a denial to the head of the agency; the agency sets the appeal period, which cannot be shorter than 90 days after the adverse determination. The statutory deadline for deciding the appeal is 20 days, excluding weekends and legal public holidays, subject to applicable extensions. Keep the request, tracking information and denial together, then follow the agency’s appeal instructions before its deadline. An appeal should focus on the disputed search or legal basis for withholding, rather than only restating the importance of the subject.

The Office of Government Information Services at the National Archives offers voluntary, nonbinding FOIA dispute resolution, but cannot compel release, reverse agency decisions or force an immediate response. That route can help untangle a misunderstanding; an enforceable order comes from a court. Federal district courts can review an agency’s withholding afresh and order improperly withheld records produced, with the agency bearing the burden of justifying its action.

When an agency misses the applicable time limits, the statute treats the requester as having exhausted administrative remedies, which opens the way to court. A court can still allow the agency additional time if the government shows exceptional circumstances and due diligence. A missed deadline does not make every requested record automatically releasable.

Courts, presidential records and classification have separate rules

Most federal court records are available online through Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), but judges may seal records in some circumstances. PACER charges access fees, while written opinions are free and records may be inspected without charge in the clerk’s office; printed copies carry per-page fees. Ordinary PACER case documents cost $0.10 per page, capped at thirty charged pages; the cap does not apply to transcripts or reports that are not case-specific. Quarterly PACER charges of $30 or less are waived.

A sealed court filing is controlled by the court, not by an agency’s FOIA office. One federal bankruptcy court’s instructions require a motion asking the court to unseal a document and say staff may unseal it only by court order. Check the relevant court’s local rules or ask its clerk how to request lifting or modifying the seal; a clerk inquiry alone does not open the document.

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6 generally prohibits listed grand-jury participants, including prosecutors, from disclosing matters occurring before the grand jury unless the rules provide otherwise. The rule allows a court to authorize specified disclosures, including disclosure preliminary to or connected with a judicial proceeding. A demand to open an investigative file therefore cannot assume that the grand-jury material within it follows the file’s other access rules.

Executive Order 13526, which sets the standards for classifying information, assigns declassification authority to the official who classified it, if still in the same position; that official’s successor; a supervisor of either; or officials given the authority in writing by the agency head or the senior agency official. The first three must themselves have original classification authority, the power to classify information in the first place. The order expressly preserves protections supplied by other law, including FOIA exemptions and the Privacy Act. Declassifying a record therefore does not settle the privacy, statutory-secrecy or court-access questions. Even a president’s decision to declassify answers only the classification question; the order leaves the other protections where other laws put them.

The Presidential Records Act establishes public ownership of presidential records and requires personal records to be kept separately, according to the National Archives. FOIA itself does not reach the president’s advisory offices, but under this act the public can request presidential records through FOIA beginning five years after an administration ends. A president can invoke as many as six specific restrictions on access for up to 12 years, and former and incumbent presidents can review records for executive privilege before the National Archives releases them. The National Archives directs written FOIA requests to the presidential library maintaining the records sought.

In an opinion issued April 1, 2026, DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel argued that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional because it exceeds congressional powers and intrudes on executive independence. In American Historical Association v. Trump, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction, a temporary order, that bars the Executive Office of the President and other federal defendants from relying on that opinion and requires them to comply with the act’s preservation and disposal requirements. The order does not cover the president or vice president. The government appealed, and on June 30, 2026, the district court paused the rest of the case while leaving the injunction in force. The case remained ongoing in both courts as of August 17, 2026, according to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse’s case summary.

Congress can create a special release duty

Jeffrey Epstein was a financier who faced federal charges of sex trafficking of minors before his death in 2019. In 2025, the Epstein Files Transparency Act directed the attorney general to release unclassified DOJ records relating to Jeffrey Epstein, including investigations and prosecutions of him, and to Ghislaine Maxwell, in a searchable, downloadable format within 30 days of enactment. That duty does not depend on each member of the public filing an ordinary FOIA request. DOJ reported producing hundreds of thousands of pages on December 19, 2025, while review continued, and over 3 million additional pages on January 30, 2026.

The act bars withholding, delaying or redacting records because of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity. It permits withholding segregable material protecting victims’ identities and privacy, containing child sexual abuse material, jeopardizing active investigations or prosecutions, depicting death or physical abuse or injury, or containing properly classified national-security information. The active-investigation or prosecution exception must be narrowly tailored and temporary. The act requires written justifications for redactions to be published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress.

In a notice dated August 21, 2026, DOJ published a report to Congress describing the categories of records released and withheld, the legal bases for redactions, and the government officials and politically exposed people named or referenced in the reviewed material. DOJ says the act does not define “politically exposed persons.” An agency’s account of its release is an explanation to examine, not an independent ruling that every withholding satisfied the law.

DOJ separately explains that some people were mentioned only in press reporting or another part of a document unrelated on its face to the Epstein and Maxwell matters. A name’s appearance therefore does not, by itself, establish an accusation, a criminal charge or a finding of wrongdoing. Read the document’s context and check any actual case disposition before treating a mention as evidence of misconduct.