Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): How to File and Appeal

To file a Freedom of Information Act request, identify the federal executive branch agency that holds the records you want, describe those records specifically enough that an unfamiliar employee could locate them, and submit the request through FOIA.gov or the agency’s own FOIA portal. There is no special form and no fee to file. The law presumes disclosure, so the agency, not you, carries the burden of justifying anything it withholds.

FOIA reaches cabinet departments, independent agencies like the FBI and CIA, government-controlled corporations, and independent regulatory commissions like the SEC.¹ It does not reach Congress, the federal courts, the White House staff in its advisory capacity, or private companies, nonprofits, and state or local governments, even those that receive federal money. If your records are held by a state or local body, look to that state’s public records law instead.

Check the Agency’s Reading Room First

A lot of what people request is already online. Every federal agency is required to maintain an electronic reading room with final opinions from administrative adjudications, policy statements, staff manuals affecting the public, and records that have already been released and are likely to be requested again.¹ Under the “rule of three,” once a record has been requested three or more times, the agency must post it proactively.

FOIA.gov links to every agency’s reading room and to previously released documents.² Ten minutes of searching there can save you months of waiting.

Write the Request

The single biggest factor in how fast and how well your request is answered is how you describe the records. The legal standard is that your description must let an agency employee unfamiliar with your project locate the records with a reasonable amount of effort. “All documents about immigration” fails that standard and gets shunted to the back of the queue or bounced back for clarification.

Tighten the request with concrete details. Give a date range. Name the program, office, division, or people involved. Say what kind of document you want: emails, memos, contracts, reports, meeting minutes. If you have a file number, case number, or docket identifier, put it in. The more precise you are, the faster and cheaper the response, and the less material the agency has to review for exemptions before releasing anything.

Identify the right agency. FOIA.gov keeps a directory of every agency’s FOIA office with contact details and submission instructions.² Each agency’s page usually lists the types of records it keeps and any local rules for submission. Sending a request to the wrong agency doesn’t kill it, but it costs you weeks while the receiving office figures out where to send it.

Include a Fee Cap

Agencies charge for searching and copying. FOIA sorts requesters into four categories, and the category controls what you pay. Commercial requesters pay search time, review time, and duplication with no free allowance. Educational and scientific institutions and news media representatives generally pay only for duplication beyond the first 100 pages. Everyone else, which is where most individuals land, gets the first two hours of search time and the first 100 pages of duplication free.³ Rates beyond the free allowance are set by each agency.

You can ask for a fee waiver by showing that releasing the records would significantly contribute to public understanding of government operations and that disclosure is not primarily in your commercial interest. Even if you’re not seeking a waiver, put a fee cap in the letter: something like, “I am willing to pay up to $50 in fees; please contact me before processing if costs will exceed that amount.” This prevents surprise bills and gives you a chance to narrow the request if the estimate comes back high.

Ask for Expedited Processing If It Applies

Most requests are worked first-in, first-out. You can ask for expedited processing in two situations: when delay could reasonably threaten someone’s life or physical safety, or when there’s an urgent need for a journalist or someone else primarily engaged in disseminating information to inform the public about actual or alleged federal government activity.⁴ Include a written statement explaining why you qualify. The agency must decide on the expedited request within 10 calendar days.

Submit the Request

The easiest route is FOIA.gov, which lets you send a request to any covered federal agency through one portal.² Many agencies also run their own submission systems tuned to their records. Mail and email are still accepted at each agency’s designated FOIA office, but electronic submission is faster and gives you an automatic record of delivery.

Get the request to the right FOIA office, not a general agency mailbox. The 20-day processing clock doesn’t start until the request reaches the correct component, though it must begin no later than 10 days after any component of the agency first receives it.¹

When the agency accepts the request, you’ll get an acknowledgment with a tracking number. Save it. You’ll need it to check status through the portal, to contact the agency’s FOIA Public Liaison, and to reference the request if you later file an appeal. Every agency has a Public Liaison whose job is to help requesters and resolve disputes before they turn into formal appeals, and agencies must tell you about that option in the acknowledgment and again in any unfavorable response.¹

What Happens After You File

The agency has 20 business days from receipt to make a determination: release the records, deny the request, or partially grant it.¹ That’s the deadline for the decision, not necessarily for delivery of the actual documents, which can take longer when the volume is large.

Agencies can extend the deadline by up to 10 additional working days for “unusual circumstances” such as searching multiple offices, reviewing a large volume of records, or consulting with another agency with a substantial interest in the records.¹ They must notify you in writing first. The agency can also pause the clock once to ask you a clarifying question or to resolve fees, and the tolling ends as soon as you respond.

In practice, agencies with large backlogs, including the FBI, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security, routinely blow past these deadlines, sometimes by months or years. The deadlines still matter, because missing them gives you the right to treat the administrative process as exhausted and go to court.

Your final response will come back as a full grant, a partial grant with redactions, or a full denial. Any withholding must identify the specific FOIA exemption that justifies it, and the response must inform you of your right to appeal and to seek help from the Public Liaison or the Office of Government Information Services.¹

Redactions and Exemptions

FOIA has nine exemptions covering categories like classified national security information, trade secrets, personal privacy, law enforcement records, internal agency deliberations, and information other statutes protect from disclosure. Exemptions aren’t automatic. Under the foreseeable harm standard added by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, an agency can only withhold information if it reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest the exemption protects.¹ Fitting inside an exemption category isn’t enough on its own.

When only part of a document is exempt, the agency has to release everything that can be reasonably separated. Redactions must be labeled with the exemption number that justifies them, and where technically feasible, the amount of information withheld at each point must be indicated on the page.¹

Occasionally an agency will refuse to confirm or deny whether responsive records even exist. This is called a Glomar response, and the theory is that confirming the existence of the records would itself reveal protected information, such as whether the FBI has opened an investigation on a named person.⁵ Glomar responses are supposed to be rare, applied consistently, and preceded by an internal search.

If You’re Denied

You can file an administrative appeal if the agency denies your request in whole or part, withholds records you believe should be released, charges fees you consider unwarranted, or fails to respond within the statutory deadline. The statute gives you at least 90 days from the date of an adverse decision to appeal, and some agencies allow longer.¹ The exact deadline and where to send the appeal will be in the denial letter.

The appeal goes to the head of the agency or a designated appeals officer, who has 20 business days to decide. Reference the original tracking number. Say which parts of the response you’re challenging and explain why: that the agency didn’t apply the foreseeable harm standard, that the search missed a specific office likely to hold responsive records, that an exemption was stretched beyond its terms. A one-line “I disagree” gets a one-line affirmance.

You can also contact the Office of Government Information Services, an arm of the National Archives that acts as a federal FOIA ombudsman. OGIS offers free mediation to resolve disputes between requesters and agencies without litigation, and you can bring them in at any point in the process.¹

Going to Court

If the appeal fails, or if the agency never responds, you can sue in federal district court. FOIA litigation is unusual in that the agency, not the requester, carries the burden of justifying each withholding, and the court reviews the exemption claims from scratch rather than deferring to the agency.

You generally have to exhaust administrative remedies by completing the appeal before filing suit. If the agency misses the 20-day response deadline, courts treat your remedies as “constructively exhausted” and let you file without waiting.⁶ But if the agency issues its response before you actually file, that constructive exhaustion is usually considered cured, and you have to go through the administrative appeal after all.

Winning gets the records released and can get you reasonable attorney fees and litigation costs, if you “substantially prevailed” — obtaining relief through a court order, an enforceable settlement, or a voluntary change in the agency’s position after suit was filed. Courts then weigh the public benefit of disclosure, any commercial motive, the nature of your interest in the records, and whether the withholding was reasonable.⁷ Requesters who represent themselves without a law license can recover litigation costs but not attorney fees.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 552 – Public Information; Agency Rules, Opinions, Orders, Records, and Proceedings
2
FOIA.gov. Freedom of Information Act: How to Make a FOIA Request
3
FOIA.gov. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
4
eCFR. 45 CFR 5.27 – How Do I Request Expedited Processing?
5
U.S. Department of Justice. FOIA Update: OIP Guidance: Privacy Glomarization
6
U.S. Department of Justice. Court Decisions: Exhaustion
7
U.S. Department of Justice. Attorney Fees and Litigation Costs