The Freedom of Information Act, enacted in 1966 and signed with reluctance by President Lyndon Johnson, gives any person — citizen or not, journalist or not — the right to request records from federal executive-branch agencies. Agencies must respond within 20 business days, either producing records or invoking one of the statute's nine exemptions, and requesters who are refused can sue at low cost, with the court reviewing the withholding de novo. The government processes several hundred thousand requests a year — the Justice Department's FOIA annual report counts over one million requests in recent peak years across all agencies — making it the world's most-used transparency law.
How does a request actually run?
The requester writes to the agency's FOIA office — many accept web forms — describing the records reasonably specifically; no formality or reason is required. The clock starts: 20 business days for a determination, with a 10-day extension for unusual circumstances. Practical realities temper the letter of the law: many agencies process in simple queues and backlogs, and the oldest pending requests at several agencies date back years, per the Justice Department's backlog statistics. “Expedited processing” is available for urgency, like a threat to life or an urgent journalistic need, and fee waivers are available when disclosure serves the public interest. Appeals of denials go to the agency head, then to federal district court, where the government must justify each withholding — the famous Vaughn index itemizing every redacted document.
What are the nine exemptions?
- (b)(1) Classified national defense and foreign policy material.
- (b)(2) Internal personnel rules and practices.
- (b)(3) Records exempted by other statutes.
- (b)(4) Confidential business information — trade secrets, commercial data.
- (b)(5) Deliberative-process privilege: predecisional drafts and agency memos.
- (b)(6) Personal privacy: personnel and medical files.
- (b)(7) Law-enforcement records, with sub-clauses protecting investigations, sources, and techniques.
- (b)(8) Financial-institution examination reports.
- (b)(9) Geological and geophysical data on wells.
In practice, three dominate litigation: exemption 5's deliberative privilege — the most contested, limited by the Supreme Court's 2021 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club ruling to genuinely predecisional documents; exemption 6's privacy balancing; and exemption 7's law-enforcement shield. Presidents also shape the law by executive order: attorney-general FOIA memoranda swing between a presumption of disclosure and a presumption favoring withholding, and the 2016 FOIA Improvement Act wrote the presumption of disclosure into statute for (b)(5).
What is not covered?
FOIA reaches federal executive agencies only. Congress, the federal courts, and the president's immediate personal office are outside it; state and local governments answer their own public-records laws — every state has one — with wildly different deadlines and exemptions. The act also covers existing records, not answers: an agency must search for what exists but need not create analyses, answer questions, or compile new databases.
LMH News publishes information, not legal advice. Procedure follows the statute, 5 U.S.C. § 552, and Justice Department guidance as of May 2026.
For more context, read What Loper Bright Means for Federal Regulation, Two Years On.
For more context, read Supreme Court Curbs Nationwide Injunctions In CASA Ruling.
For more context, read How Continuing Resolutions Keep Federal Agencies Funded.