Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer Delivers Remarks at 14th Annual Sunshine Week Event

Dep’t of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Mar. 11, 2024

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Welcome to the Justice Department’s 14th Annual Sunshine Week event. I am so pleased to kick off this important week for those of us who believe that our democracy functions best when the public knows what its government is doing. Sunshine Week is an opportunity to honor the public servants — like so many of you here — who work tirelessly to administer FOIA. But it is also an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the broader principles of openness, transparency, and accountability that FOIA serves.

For more than 50 years, FOIA has been a vital tool for advancing these core democratic principles. Two years ago, the Attorney General reaffirmed the government’s commitment to those principles by issuing comprehensive new FOIA guidelines. The 2022 guidelines direct the heads of all executive branch departments and agencies to apply a presumption of openness in administering FOIA: “In case of doubt,” the guidelines instruct, “openness should prevail.” The guidelines make clear that the Justice Department will not defend nondisclosure decisions that fail to apply such a presumption. And, finally, the guidelines emphasize the importance of making proactive disclosures, removing barriers to accessing government information, and reducing FOIA processing backlogs.

Read more here.