Freedom of Information Act FOIA

Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act on July 4, 1966, after a decade of pressure from Representative John Moss and news organizations. It gives any person, citizen or not, the right to request records from federal executive agencies, and requires agencies to release them unless an exemption applies. After Watergate, Congress strengthened the law in 1974 over Gerald Ford's veto, adding deadlines and allowing judges to review withheld documents. Agencies are supposed to respond within twenty business days, though many take far longer.

Nine exemptions allow withholding: classified national security information, internal personnel rules, information barred by other statutes, trade secrets, privileged internal deliberations, personal privacy, certain law enforcement records, bank examination reports, and geological data on wells. Since 2016 agencies may withhold under several exemptions only if they reasonably foresee harm from release. Requesters who are denied can appeal within the agency and then sue in federal court, where the government bears the burden of justifying the withholding.

Federal agencies receive well over a million requests a year, the largest share at the Department of Homeland Security, much of it from immigrants seeking their own case files. In fiscal 2025 agencies received a record 1,707,197 requests, up nearly 14 percent from the year before, and processed 1,635,055. FOIA does not cover Congress, the federal courts, or the President's immediate White House staff. Journalists, historians, and advocacy groups have used it to uncover major stories, while agencies report persistent backlogs and staffing shortages that slow responses.