As 2025 gets underway, the FOIA Advisor staff is pleased to provide a summary of the most notable FOIA developments that occurred outside the courtroom in 2024. We will discuss our top 2024 court decisions in a forthcoming post.
Legislation
On June 3, 2024, U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05) re-introduced the Transparency in Government Act, H.R. 8597, which would require agencies to, among other things, post all FOIA-disclosed records online, affirmatively disclose additional records, and conduct a public interest balancing test in addition to assessing foreseeable harm. No action has been taken on the bill since its introduction and referral to several committees.
On July 23, 2024, Congressman Adam Schiff introduced the “Judicial FOIA Expansion Act,” H.R. 9108, which would permit the public to request records from federal courts through the same process used for federal agencies. The bill was referred to the House Oversight Committee on the same date. No further actions have been taken. Read FOIA Advisor’s commentary on the bill here.
Regulatory updates
By our count, four agencies proposed changes to their FOIA regulations in calendar year 2024 that have not yet been finalized: Council on Environmental Quality; Federal Election Commission; Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; and Selective Service System.
Five agencies issued final rules amending their FOIA regulations in calendar year 2024: Social Security Administration; Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board; Postal Regulatory Commission; Office of Management and Budget; and Peace Corps. The Department of Education and the Department of Defense also issued technical corrections in early 2024 to rules they finalized in 2023.
Federal FOIA Advisory Committee
The FOIA Advisory Committee for the 2022-2024 term wrapped up its business with the issuance of its final report on June 13, 2024. In sum, the Committee made 16 recommendations to the Archivist. Several recommendations pertained to “improvements in staffing, training, and technology.” The Committee also addessed “best practices aimed at improving dialogue with individual FOIA requesters, as well as with the FOIA community and civil society at large.”
The Committee’s 2024-2026 term convened its first two meetings in September 2024 and created three subcommittees to advance the Committee’s work: Implementation Subcommittee; Statutory Reform Subcommittee; and Volume and Frequency Subcommittee. FOIA Advisor’s Ryan Mulvey co-chairs the Statutory Reform Subcommittee.
Other agency actions
The Department of Justice announced on March 4, 2024, that federal agencies had received a record-high total of 1,122,166 requests in fiscal year 2023, a nearly 30 percent increase from FY 2022. DOJ published a more comprehensive summary of agency FY 2023 annual reports on June 7, 2024.
On March 7, 2024, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report about agency FOIA backlogs.
A new search tool for law enforcement records was added to the FOIA.gov website on July 18, 2024.
The Office of Government Information Services published written recommendations on three issues in calendar year 2024: (1) Using FOIA to Access Intelligence Community Records (Dec. 9, 2024); (2) Estimated Dates of Completion Challenges Symptoms of Larger Delay Issue (Oct. 30, 2024); and (3) NCND/Glomar: When Agencies Neither Confirm Nor Deny the Existence of Records (Mar. 24, 2024).
Stories of interest
We typically do not post news stories about the filing of FOIA requests or stories that are based on records obtained via FOIA. But some are too quirky or consequential to ignore entirely. Here are a few that captured our attention in 2024.
The Heritage Foundation’s “oversight project” deluged federal agencies with thousands of FOIA requests targeting the emails of federal employees. See, e.g., Robin Bravender, Heritage Foundation’s record requests rattle feds, Greenwire, Oct. 2, 2024. A debate about Heritage’s FOIA practices ensued. Compare Lauren Harper, Heritage Foundation sends lots of FOIAs. That shouldn’t be a problem Freedom of the Press Found., Oct. 8, 2024, with Michael Ravnitzky, The Heritage Foundation’s Reckless Misuse of FOIA to Target Individuals, LLRX, Oct. 9, 2024, and Pub. Employees for Envtl. Responsibility, Press Release, Feds Should Stifle Heritage Foundation Witch Hunt, Oct. 17, 2024.
This debate occurred before the November 2024 election, so partisans might change their positions on Heritage’s tactics. Indeed, less than 48 hours after Election Day, the Sierra Club announced a “massive FOIA operation.” See Robin Bravender, Sierra Club boss vows ‘massive FOIA operation’, Greenwire, Nov. 7, 2024.
In May 2024, the U.S. House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic disclosed evidence suggesting that NIH employees deleted messages and tried to evade FOIA. See, e.g., Benjamin Mueller, Health Officials Tried to Evade Public Records Laws, Lawmakers Say, NY Times, May 28, 2024.
The Internal Revenue Service’s online FOIA portal directs requesters to register with a private identity credentialing service, a system the IRS defended. See Rebecca Heilweil, IRS defends use of biometric verification for online FOIA filers, FedScoop, June 10, 2024.