Department of Justice Official Uses Sunshine Week Event to Spread Misinformation about FOIA Processing
TRAC, Mar. 17, 2020
At a recent Sunshine Week event, a Department of Justice spokesperson claimed that FOIA applicants are now quicker to litigate, then blamed overly-litigious requesters for straining the workloads of FOIA professionals and bogging down ordinary citizens' FOIA requests.
TRAC finds the underlying claim to be unsubstantiated and counterfactual. TRAC's recent empirical study found that not only were requesters not jumping into court immediately, requesters were actually waiting on average six months-a full month longer than they had five years ago-before filing a FOIA lawsuit. Additionally, TRAC found that the increase in FOIA lawsuits was due to FOIA officials' failure to respond to requests in a timely manner as required by law.
Read more here.
THE INCREASE IN FOIA LAWSUITS ISN’T THE PROBLEM — IT’S AGENCIES UNDERFUNDING THEIR TRANSPARENCY OBLIGATIONS
American Oversight, Mar. 17, 2020
Sunshine Week celebrates the success FOIA has had in providing the public with insight into the operations of the federal government. But the ability of the law to serve this important function is facing increasing challenges as requests are met by long agency backlogs and delays in processing. FOIA cannot serve its intended functions if agencies are permitted to set a timetable that avoids access to agency records when they are salient to current public debates. Thus it is disappointing to hear the Department of Justice’s chief FOIA officer, acting Associate Attorney General Claire Murray, opening the department’s Sunshine Week festivities by complaining that requesters are “filing suit as soon as they can” when agencies fail to meet their legal obligations under FOIA.
…
Unfortunately, many agencies across the executive branch have failed to meet their obligation to make timely determinations on FOIA requests. As a result, they have developed significant FOIA backlogs, and FOIA requesters face increasing delays in receiving the documents to which they are entitled. It is not unusual for FOIA requesters to be told that the search for records responsive to their FOIA will not even be initiated until more than a year after the request was submitted, and several agencies recently have been giving requesters estimated dates for the completion of their requests that are several years in the future.
Read more here.