n. (abbr. FOIA)a law granting individuals the right to request and access information held by a government agency, as well as the agency’s legal authority to refuse access to such informationBehrnd-Klodt and Wosh 2005, 7Most public legislation, such as the FOIA, the Privacy Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, and open records laws, primarily affect access to government records that are held in agencies and repositories.Behrnd-Klodt and Wosh 2005, 276Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552, In contrast to the federal Privacy Act (described below), FOIA was enacted in 1966 to provide individuals with access not only to their own files, but to provide access to all federal agency records, with certain exemptions.US CGR 2005, 3The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes a presumption that records in the possession of agencies and departments of the executive branch of the U.S. Government are accessible to the people. This was not always the approach to Federal information disclosure policy. Before enactment of the FOIA in 1966, the burden was on the individual to establish a right to examine these government records. There were no statutory guidelines or procedures to help a person seeking information. There were no judicial remedies for those denied access. ¶ With the passage of the FOIA, the burden of proof shifted from the individual to the government. Those seeking information are no longer required to show a need for information. Instead, the “need to know” standard has been replaced by a “right to know” doctrine.US CGR 2005, 6–7The Federal Freedom of Information Act applies to documents held by agencies of the executive branch of the Federal Government. The executive branch includes cabinet departments, military departments, government corporations, government controlled corporations, independent regulatory agencies, and other establishments in the executive branch. ¶ The FOIA does not apply to elected officials of the Federal Government, including the President, Vice President, Senators, and Representatives. The FOIA does not apply to the Federal judiciary. The FOIA does not apply to private companies; persons who receive Federal contracts or grants; private organizations; or State or local governments.Whorley 2005, 115The statutory language of Exemption 6 does not provide guidance on whether the privacy interests protected by FOIA diminish upon the death of the person mentioned in the record. In this case, they privacy interests to be protected by FOIA may depend on the relationships that third parties have with the deceased.Behrnd-Klodt 2008, 156The Freedom of Information Act of 1966 (FOIA) codifies the Bill of Rights’ guarantees that Americans have a right to information about their government. Under FOIA, the first major federal law to mandate and ensure greater access to governmental records, Congress opened all federal records for public access, inspection, and copying, with specific exemptions, to underline the fact that the government’s business is everyone’s business. . . . FOIA requires each federal agency to make information available to any person who makes a proper request.Yaco 2010, 644The federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows agencies to make a subjective choice about disclosure of the records of the deceased, “as a general rule, under the Privacy Act, privacy rights are extinguished at death. However, under FOIA, it is entirely appropriate to consider the privacy interests of a decedent’s survivors.”Lawrence 2016, 105Researchers may obtain documents held by the federal government, but not yet released to the National Archives, through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Once released to one person, such documents are essentially considered public, although copies are not necessarily archived for others to use.Slate and Minchew 2016, 11The federal Freedom of Information Act (1966) and the Right to Privacy Act (1974) peripherally benefitted local government archives by promoting the notion of transparency in government.NARA 2018cNARA will deny a FOIA request in whole or in part only when we determine that information may be withheld under one or more of the nine FOIA exemptions, but only if we determine that disclosure would harm an interest protected by such exemption: ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(1): Classified national security information. ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(2): Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency. ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(3): Information specifically exempted from disclosure by statute. ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(4): Trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person that is privileged or confidential. ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(5): Inter- or intra- agency memoranda protected by a privilege, such as the attorney work-product, attorney-client, or deliberative process privileges, except that the deliberative process privilege shall not apply to records created 25 years or more before the date on which the records were requested. ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(6): Personnel and medical files and similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(7): Records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, to the extent that the production of these records could: ¶ o (b)(7)(A) could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings; ¶ o (b)(7)(B) would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication; ¶ o (b)(7)(C) could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; ¶ o (b)(7)(D) could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of and/or information provided by a confidential source; ¶ o (b)(7)(E) would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions; or, ¶ o (b)(7)(F) could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual. ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(8): Information relating to the supervision of financial institutions. ¶ • 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(9): Geological and geophysical information and data, including maps, concerning wells.Oestreicher 2020, 3Perhaps more than any other legislative enactment, FOIA set a national precedent that all citizens have the right to access information, and the implications transcended government archives by affecting access policies at other repositories.EFF 2024FOIA was originally championed by Democratic Congressman John Moss from California in 1955 after a series of proposals during the Cold War led to a steep a rise in government secrecy. . . . ¶ Unfortunately, President Lyndon B. Johnson, a fellow Democrat, opposed the bill—in fact, every federal agency and department at the time opposed it. . . . ¶ On the 4th of July, 1966, Johnson decided not to hold a public event for the signing—which he did for other major bills. Instead, he issued a signing statement when making the bill a law, in which he attempted to undercut the law by focusing on exemptions for national security and FOIA's room for interpretation. Yet the last sentence of his signing statement is the one that endures: “I sign this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society.” ¶ Though the 1966 bill was a huge step towards government transparency, FOIA lacked the teeth necessary to force government agencies to comply. It wasn't until 1974, after the Watergate scandal and the tight-lipped Nixon administration, that Congress amended FOIA to become the bill it is today. The Senate and the House introduced many new requirements, timeframes, sanctions for wrongly withheld information, and necessary language waiving fees for journalists and public interest groups.
Notes
The federal Freedom of Information Act is codified at 5 USC § 552. All states, and many countries, have similar laws, though the names may vary, and the laws are not uniform among states.
