Public Records Laws by State: FOIA Guide for All 50 States (2026)

Every US state, plus the District of Columbia, has a public records law that gives the public a right to see government records. The federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, is a separate law that reaches only federal agencies. Which law you use depends on who holds the record, not on what the record is about.

The Two Systems: Federal FOIA and 51 State Laws

Records access in the United States runs on two tracks that do not overlap. The federal Freedom of Information Act covers federal executive-branch agencies: departments, military departments, government corporations, government-controlled corporations, and independent regulatory agencies, as those terms are used in 5 U.S.C. § 552. Congress, the federal courts, and the President's immediate personal staff sit outside that definition, so FOIA does not reach them.

Everything else is state law. A county sheriff's incident report, a city council's email, a state university's contract, a school district's budget: all of those are governed by the public records statute of the state that holds them, and by nothing in the federal FOIA.

The practical consequence is simple. Before you write anything, identify the custodian. If the record sits with the FBI, the Department of Veterans Affairs, or USCIS, you are on the federal track. If it sits with any state, county, city, township, school district, or state agency, you are on that state's track, and the deadline, the fee rules and the appeal route all come from the table below.

Why Everyone Says FOIA

"FOIA" has become the generic verb for asking a government for records. Literally, it is the name of the federal statute. Several states also branded their own law that way: Virginia's is formally the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Michigan, South Carolina and West Virginia all use the same label for laws that have nothing to do with the federal act.

That matters when you file. Citing 5 U.S.C. § 552 to a county clerk cites a law that does not apply to them. Most agencies will process the request anyway, but the deadlines, exemptions and appeal rights that actually govern the answer are the state ones. Name the right statute and you get the right clock.

Public Records Laws by State

The table compares the four things that decide how a request goes: the statute that applies, whether a non-resident may file, what the response clock is, and where a denial gets reviewed. Every statute link goes to the official state source. Information is current as of August 2026; deadlines and fee rules change by legislative session, so check the linked statute before relying on a figure.

One reading note. Several states set a deadline to decide rather than a deadline to produce. Where that distinction exists in the statute, the cell says so.

The table below covers 9 states in the Northeast.

The table below covers 12 states in the Midwest.

The table below covers 16 states in the South, plus the District of Columbia.

The table below covers 13 states in the West.

Ready to file? Start with the step-by-step guide to filing a FOIA request, or build the letter itself with the free FOIA request generator, which fills in the right statute, deadline and appeal language for the jurisdiction you pick.

How the Federal FOIA Works

The federal FOIA gives any person the right to request records from a federal executive-branch agency. There is no citizenship requirement, no residency requirement, and no requirement to say why you want the records.

The 20-Business-Day Clock

An agency must make a determination on your request within 20 days, "excepting Saturdays, Sundays, and legal public holidays," under 5 U.S.C. § 552. It may take up to 10 additional working days by giving written notice of unusual circumstances.

Note what that clock covers. It is a deadline to determine whether the agency will comply and to tell you so, not a deadline to place the documents in your hands. Complex requests routinely take far longer in practice. Government-wide, the executive branch received about 1.7 million FOIA requests in fiscal year 2025, and agency reporting shows most simple requests closing inside 20 days while complex ones spread across much longer bands.

The Nine Exemptions

FOIA's presumption is disclosure. An agency withholds only under one of nine exemptions, and it must tell you which one it used:

1. National security. Information properly classified to protect national security.
2. Internal personnel rules. Information related solely to an agency's internal personnel rules and practices.
3. Withheld by another statute. Information another federal law prohibits from being disclosed.
4. Trade secrets and confidential business information. Commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged.
5. Privileged inter-agency communications. Deliberative process (for records created less than 25 years before the request), attorney work product, and attorney-client privilege.
6. Personal privacy. Information whose release would invade another individual's personal privacy.
7. Law enforcement records. Records compiled for law enforcement purposes, where release would interfere with proceedings, deprive someone of a fair trial, invade personal privacy, expose a confidential source, reveal investigative techniques, or endanger someone's life or physical safety.
8. Financial institution supervision. Information concerning the supervision of financial institutions.
9. Well data. Geological information on wells.

An exemption is permission to withhold, not an order to. Agencies can and sometimes do release exempt material as a discretionary matter.

What It Costs, and When It Does Not

Fees depend on which requester category you fall into. Commercial requesters pay search, duplication and review. Educational and scientific institutions and news media pay duplication only. Everyone else pays search and duplication. For non-commercial requesters, the first two hours of search time and the first 100 pages are free, so a tightly scoped request often costs nothing at all.

A fee waiver is separate and narrower. It applies where disclosure is in the public interest because it is "likely to contribute significantly to public understanding" of government operations and "is not primarily in the commercial interest" of the requester. Ask for it in the request itself and explain how the records serve that public understanding.

foia.gov Is a Portal, Not an Office

There is no central federal FOIA office that answers requests. As FOIA.gov puts it, each federal agency handles its own records, across roughly one hundred agencies subject to the Act. FOIA.gov is a front door: it hosts the government-wide data, explains the law, and routes you to the right agency's own request system.

Some agencies now require their own portal. USCIS, for example, moved to online-only FOIA filing through first.uscis.gov as of January 22, 2026. The FBI takes requests through its eFOIPA portal at efoia.fbi.gov, and mail requests for your own records use DOJ Form DOJ-361 with either a notarized signature or the statutory perjury declaration.

Requests must be in writing and must "reasonably describe" the records. Agencies do not have to create a record that does not exist, conduct research for you, or answer questions.

Appeal, Mediation, Then Court

If an agency denies your request, you file an administrative appeal with that agency. FOIA gives you at least 90 days to file it, and the agency must decide within 20 business days.

Beyond that, the Office of Government Information Services at the National Archives serves as the federal FOIA ombuds and offers free mediation between requesters and agencies. Reach it at archives.gov/ogis, ogis@nara.gov, or 202-741-5770.

The final route is a lawsuit in federal district court, which 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B) allows where you reside, where you have your principal place of business, where the records are located, or in the District of Columbia.

Response Deadlines Are Not All the Same Thing

Comparing state deadlines is where most quick summaries go wrong, because three genuinely different things get printed in the same column.

Fixed-count states set a number. About a dozen states in the table run on some version of a five-day clock: Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia count five business days, Maine and Virginia count five working days, and Kentucky counts five days excluding weekends and legal holidays. Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah use ten business days for the initial response. Maryland uses thirty days. Idaho splits its count by residency, and no other state does that.

Reasonable-time states set no number at all. Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma and Wisconsin all use a promptness standard: records go out without unreasonable delay, and what counts as unreasonable depends on volume, staffing and the need for legal review. Florida and Arizona work the same way. This is not a research gap in those states; it is how their legislatures wrote the law. Alaska is a hybrid worth separating out: its statute sets only a reasonableness standard, but 2 AAC 96.325 gives executive-branch state agencies a 10-working-day initial response clock, so the day count comes from regulation and does not reach municipalities.

Determination-versus-production states set a fast clock for an answer and a slower, softer one for the documents. California's 10 days is a deadline to decide whether disclosable records exist, extendable by 14. Connecticut's 4 business days is a deadline for a written denial. New York's 5 business days lets an agency simply acknowledge with an approximate date. Maryland requires notice within 10 working days if production will take longer than that.

Three figures in particular get repeated wrongly. Texas does not have a 10-business-day production deadline. Section 552.221(a) requires production "promptly." Two separate provisions carry the 10-business-day figure: § 552.221(d) makes the officer certify in writing and set a date and hour if the records cannot be produced in that window, and § 552.301 is the deadline for a governmental body to ask the Attorney General for a ruling when it wants to withhold something. Iowa does not have a 10-day or 20-day deadline either. Those numbers come from § 22.8(4), which caps how long a good-faith delay may run while confidentiality is assessed. Indiana's 24-hour and 7-day figures are not deadlines at all: IC 5-14-3-9(b) and (c) use them to fix the moment a refusal becomes a legally recognized denial, which is what opens your right to sue, while IC 5-14-3-3 leaves the response duty at a reasonable time. None of them is a promise about when you get records.

Several states also convert a missed deadline into an automatic denial you can appeal: Arizona, the District of Columbia (§ 2-532(e), which also exhausts your administrative remedies automatically), Idaho, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (§ 901), Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Virginia (§ 2.2-3704(E)) all work this way, which is useful, because silence otherwise leaves you with nothing to appeal from.

Who Is Allowed to File

The default across the country is that any person may request public records, without regard to residency, citizenship or purpose. Washington puts the rule most bluntly: agencies "shall not distinguish among persons requesting records" and may not ask your purpose, under RCW 42.56.080. New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Rhode Island all bar an agency from requiring a reason.

Five states restrict the statutory right to their own residents:

• Alabama, where a resident is someone permanently domiciled in the state and proof of residency may be demanded (Ala. Code § 36-12-43).
• Arkansas, where the Freedom of Information Act opens records to "any citizen of the State of Arkansas."
• Kentucky, though its definition is broad: people who live in, work in, or own real property in Kentucky, registered business entities, anyone authorized to act for them, and news-gathering organizations (KRS 61.870(10)).
• Tennessee, where only citizens of the state have the guaranteed right and a government-issued photo ID showing an address may be required.
• Virginia, which opens records to "citizens of the Commonwealth" plus representatives of in-state newspapers, magazines and broadcast stations (Va. Code § 2.2-3704(A)).

Two states are commonly listed as resident-only and should not be. New Jersey's operative access clause at N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5(a) says the custodian shall permit a record to be inspected "by any person"; the "citizens of this State" phrase people quote comes from the legislative policy declaration, not from the access grant. Delaware is genuinely ambiguous rather than restrictive: 29 Del. C. § 10003(a) says access shall not be denied to "any citizen," without the words "of this State," while the chapter's policy declaration at § 10001 speaks of accountability to the citizens of this State.

Two more use the word citizen without the effect people expect. South Dakota is open in practice: SDCL 1-27-1 gives the right to "all citizens of this state, and all other persons interested in the examination of the public records," and that second clause reaches beyond South Dakota. New Hampshire is the genuinely unresolved one: RSA 91-A:4, I gives "every citizen" the right to inspect governmental records, and how a body treats a non-resident in practice is not something this page has verified. Treat it as an open question rather than as either an open door or a bar.

Pennsylvania sits outside both groups. The Right-to-Know Law defines a requester as "a person that is a legal resident of the United States," so the limit is national rather than state-level, and it turns on residence rather than citizenship. Someone living in Ohio may file in Pennsylvania; someone living abroad has no statutory right to.

Idaho belongs in its own category. Anyone may request, but Idaho Code § 74-103 gives residents 3 working days for a decision and 10 working days for production, against 21 days and 35 days for non-residents, and reserves the free tier of two hours of labor and 100 pages for residents. Nebraska draws a similar fee line: residents get the first eight cumulative hours of staff time free, while non-residents can be billed for staff time, including attorney review, from the first hour.

A residency rule is not a wall. Agencies in resident-only states may still fill a non-resident's request voluntarily, and Alabama's statute says so explicitly. What a non-resident loses is the enforceable right, and with it the appeal.

Where a Denial Gets Reviewed

The appeal route matters more than the deadline, because it decides whether contesting a refusal costs you a filing fee and a lawyer or nothing at all.

Binding administrative bodies are the strongest option and the rarest. Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission hears appeals within 30 days of a denial and can impose civil penalties of $20 to $5,000 on a custodian who denied access without reasonable grounds. Illinois gives the Attorney General's Public Access Counselor authority to issue a binding opinion, which the public body must then take to circuit court if it disagrees. Kentucky's Attorney General issues an Open Records Decision within 20 days, excluding weekends and legal holidays and extendable by up to 30 additional work days, and if nobody appeals within 30 days that decision has the force of law and is enforceable in circuit court.

Dedicated records offices and tribunals sit a step below. Pennsylvania's Office of Open Records takes appeals within 15 business days and issues a Final Determination, normally within 30 days. Massachusetts routes appeals to the Supervisor of Records, who decides within 10 business days, and c. 66, § 10A(c) separately preserves an independent civil action decided de novo. New Jersey lets the requester choose between the Government Records Council and Superior Court. Ohio offers the Court of Claims as a lower-cost alternative to mandamus, after a written complaint and a three-business-day cure period, but the two are not interchangeable: only mandamus reaches statutory damages and attorney fees, while the $25 Court of Claims route recovers the filing fee and costs. South Dakota sends appeals to the Office of Hearing Examiners. Mississippi gives a choice rather than a sequence: § 25-61-13 lets a requester complain to the Ethics Commission or file in chancery court, and says expressly that no party has to exhaust administrative remedies first. Iowa's Public Information Board takes a free complaint within 60 days and can issue orders that carry the force of law and are enforceable in district court. Maryland runs a two-stage free route, the Public Access Ombudsman first and then the State Public Information Act Compliance Board, which can order production and cut or refund a fee. Oklahoma's Attorney General now houses a Public Access Counselor Unit under 51 O.S. § 24A.40. Hawaii's Office of Information Practices reviews denials, and Minnesota's go to an administrative law judge.

Ombudsman models exist in New Hampshire, where the Right-to-Know Ombudsman charges a waivable $25 filing fee under RSA 91-A:7-b and whose decisions are appealable to superior court within 30 days, though the ombudsman and the court are mutually exclusive forums rather than two bites at the same dispute. Wyoming's route starts at § 16-4-202(c)(v), which lets an applicant file an ombudsman complaint or petition the district court at any time, with in camera review of the records mandatory either way. The ombudsman's more familiar powers, to mediate, prescribe a release timeline and waive the agency's fees outright, sit one step further along in § 16-4-203(f), which applies once the entity misses a mutually agreed release date or defies an ombudsman order.

Attorney General review without binding force covers several states. North Dakota, Nebraska and Oregon let you petition for a determination. Georgia's Attorney General runs a voluntary mediation program for disputes with local governments. Kansas's Attorney General has independent enforcement power.

Court-only states leave litigation as the sole route: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin among them. That is less forbidding than it sounds, because most of these statutes shift fees. A prevailing requester recovers costs and reasonable attorney's fees under California Gov. Code § 7923.115, Virginia Code § 2.2-3713(D), New Mexico's § 14-2-12 (where the award is mandatory), and Washington's RCW 42.56.550, which also allows penalties of up to $100 a day. Oklahoma adds a procedural trap worth knowing in advance, and it applies even though the state now has an administrative route: under 51 O.S. § 24A.17(C) you must give the public body and the Attorney General at least 10 business days' written notice before filing suit. North Carolina has a harder gate still: under G.S. § 132-9(a) the court has no jurisdiction over a public records action unless the requester has first complied with the mediation required by G.S. § 7A-38.3E, so mediation there is a jurisdictional precondition rather than an option.

What Records Cost

Filing is free almost everywhere. Copies and staff time frequently are not, and the spread across states is wide.

Per-page caps run from 5 cents in Massachusetts and New Jersey, through 10 cents in Delaware (after 20 free pages), Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Michigan and Missouri, 15 cents in Florida, Illinois (after 50 free pages), Rhode Island and Washington's default schedule, 25 cents in Minnesota, New York, North Dakota and Oklahoma, up to $1.00 a page in New Mexico for documents 11x17 inches or smaller.

Labor charges are the bigger variable. Massachusetts and Maine cap staff time at $25 an hour, Rhode Island at $15, Montana at $25 with a $5 filing fee for complex requests, and Colorado at a statewide maximum of $41.37 an hour for research and retrieval, effective July 1, 2024, on top of a 25-cent-per-page cap. Virginia allows charges for search and review time and lets a public body demand a deposit where it determines in advance that charges are likely to exceed $200, so a broad Virginia request can stall on money before it stalls on law. Several states bill at the salary of the lowest-paid employee qualified to do the work, including Georgia, Kansas, New York and South Carolina. West Virginia goes the other way and forbids a search or retrieval fee entirely.

Free tiers matter more than caps for ordinary requests. Illinois gives the first 50 pages free and Delaware the first 20. Maine waives the first two hours of staff time, Massachusetts four hours for state agencies and two for larger municipalities, Maryland the first two hours, Rhode Island the first hour, and Nebraska eight cumulative hours for residents. Iowa charges nothing at all for records that take under 30 minutes to produce, and Minnesota may not charge anyone to inspect records on site.

A federal-style public-interest fee waiver is not universal, and readers should not assume one. Counting only public-interest waivers, one exists in some form in Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin. Rhode Island's belongs on the list with an asterisk, because § 38-2-4 frames the reduction or waiver as something a court orders rather than something you assert at the counter. Utah's sits at § 63G-2-203(4), which encourages an entity to fill a request free where release primarily benefits the public, where you are the subject of the record, or where your legal rights are directly implicated and you are impecunious, and a denied waiver is appealable and reviewed de novo. Indigency waivers are a separate category worth naming: Connecticut's § 1-212 is mandatory both for an indigent requester and where the records serve the general welfare, which is why it is on the list, while Louisiana has an indigency waiver at R.S. 44:32(C)(1)(a) and no public-interest branch at all, which is why it is not. Wisconsin's sits at § 19.35(3)(e), which lets an authority waive or reduce a fee where doing so is in the public interest, and Hawaii runs a separate public-interest waiver at HAR § 2-71-32 on top of the first $30 of search and review time that HAR § 2-71-31(a) already bars. Four more are worth naming because they are easy to miss in the fee sections: Illinois at 5 ILCS 140/6(c), Texas at § 552.267(a), which both say records shall be furnished free or at a reduced charge once the body finds a waiver is in the public interest, Nebraska at § 84-712(3)(h), and Arkansas at § 25-19-105(d)(3)(A)(iv), both discretionary and both limited to noncommercial requests. Arkansas carries a countervailing rule worth knowing before you ask for police video: A.C.A. § 25-19-112 makes retrieval, review, redaction and copying of law enforcement media chargeable, free only up to three hours, and up to $20 an hour above that. No waiver provision appears in the statutory text of several others, including Arizona, Florida, New York, Vermont and West Virginia, which cap costs instead. Where no waiver exists, the way to control cost is to narrow the request: name a date range, a specific office and a document type rather than asking for everything on a subject.

Police Reports and Body Camera Footage

Law enforcement records are the most-requested category and the least uniform. Some states run body camera footage through the ordinary records law with a longer clock, others carve it out entirely, and several built a separate statute with its own requester list and its own court standard.

South Carolina excludes it from FOIA outright. Under S.C. Code § 23-1-240(G)(1), body-worn camera data "is not a public record subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act." Access runs instead through criminal or civil discovery, a court order, or the agency's discretion.

The District of Columbia gives it a longer clock, and one address. Body-worn camera recordings get 25 days instead of the standard 15, extendable by 15 more, under D.C. Code § 2-532(c)(2)(A). Route the request correctly: § 2-532(c)(2)(B) provides that a body-worn camera request may only be submitted to the Metropolitan Police Department, so sending it to another District agency that happens to hold a copy is not a valid filing.

North Carolina built a separate track. G.S. § 132-1.4A is not part of the general public-records route: only a person depicted in the recording or a defined representative may request disclosure, the court reviews for abuse of discretion rather than de novo, and no attorney's fees may be awarded to either side, which is the opposite of the general § 132-9 rule.

Kentucky's statute distinguishes by what is on the recording. KRS 61.168 lets an agency decline to release footage in 14 privacy categories, such as the interior of a private residence, but footage showing a use of force, an arrest or detention, or the subject of a formal complaint against an officer is governed solely by the ordinary Open Records Act.

Minnesota opens footage in specific circumstances. Under Minn. Stat. § 13.825, recordings are generally private data, but data documenting an officer's discharge of a firearm or a use of force causing substantial bodily harm is public, the subject of a recording can request release, and where someone dies from police use of force the next of kin must be allowed to view the footage within five days and the agency must release it publicly within 14 days absent a written assertion of investigative interference.

Washington and Ohio price it rather than block it. RCW 42.56.240(14) lets an agency charge others the cost of redaction while a person directly involved in the incident pays nothing, and redaction time does not count against the response clock. Ohio caps video production charges at $75 an hour and $750 per request, and waives the video fee for crime victims.

Others fall in between. Kansas classifies body and vehicle camera recordings as criminal investigation records but gives the person depicted, a parent of a depicted minor, heirs of a deceased person depicted, and their attorneys a right to view within 20 days. Illinois exempts records the Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act prohibits from release. Michigan exempts recordings made in a private place. North Dakota exempts images taken in a private place. Wyoming makes peace officer recordings a discretionary-release category. Missouri closes mobile video while an investigation is active but lets the person depicted, their family, attorney or insurer request a complete copy. Florida exempts footage taken in a private residence, a healthcare facility, or anywhere a reasonable person would expect privacy. Louisiana requires a bodycam request to be incident-specific as to date, time, location or persons involved.

For where individual 911 recordings fit, see whether 911 calls are public records, which tracks that narrower question state by state.

Three Things People Get Wrong

Vital records are not records-act requests. Birth, death and marriage certificates run through state health departments and vital records offices under their own eligibility rules, which usually limit certified copies to the person named, immediate family and legal representatives. Filing a public records request for a death certificate sends it to the wrong office under the wrong law. Our state-by-state death records guide covers who is eligible and how to order. Property deeds are different again: they are recorded, indexed and generally open at the county level, which the property records guide explains.

Sunshine Law usually means open meetings, not open records. In Florida the nickname belongs to Chapter 286, the open-meetings law, while records requests run under Chapter 119, the Public Records Act. Missouri is the exception that causes the confusion: its Chapter 610 is formally the Sunshine Law and covers both meetings and records.

A state FOIA is not the federal FOIA. Virginia's statute is titled the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and it is state law with a five-working-day clock, a residency limit, and a mandamus remedy. Citing 5 U.S.C. § 552 to a Virginia county gets you nowhere; citing Va. Code § 2.2-3704 gets you a deadline.

Filing a Request That Works

Four habits do most of the work, whatever jurisdiction you are in.

Name the statute. "This is a request under the Ohio Public Records Act, R.C. § 149.43" tells the custodian which clock they are on and which exemptions they have to justify.

Describe records, not subjects. Agencies must find records that are reasonably described; they do not have to research a topic for you or answer questions. Ask for "all emails between the city manager and the vendor between March 1 and June 30, 2026" rather than "everything about the contract."

Set a cost ceiling. A line saying you authorize charges up to a stated amount and want to be contacted before that is exceeded prevents a request from stalling on an unanswered estimate.

Ask for the denial in writing, with the exemption cited. In most states that written denial is what starts your appeal window, and in several a missed deadline is itself a denial you can appeal.

The FOIA request generator assembles all four for the jurisdiction you select, with the correct statutory citation, deadline language and appeal reference. Nothing you enter is saved or transmitted. For the federal process end to end, including the FBI and USCIS paths, see how to file a FOIA request.

A Note on Currency

Public records statutes change every legislative session, and several states rewrote theirs recently. Alabama substantially restructured its law through Act 2024-278, adding a tiered acknowledgment and response timeline. New Jersey rewrote OPRA through P.L. 2024, c.16, effective September 3, 2024, and that is the version in force; the earlier P.L. 2023, c.113 text still circulates and is out of date, so check the date on any OPRA copy you are handed. California's Public Records Act was renumbered in 2023, so any citation to former Gov. Code § 6250 is out of date. Since July 1, 2026, Montana's day counts apply to a public agency that is not a local government, while counties, cities, towns and school districts owe only a response in a timely manner; the numbers themselves did not change.

A few states publish their statutes in places that are easy to get wrong. Arkansas routes its official code through a portal that blocks automated access, so the figures in the Arkansas cells come from the Attorney General's FOIA Handbook, which reprints A.C.A. §§ 25-19-101 through 25-19-112 in full, including the law enforcement media fee provision at § 25-19-112 that makes police video chargeable. Colorado's deadline and fee figures come from the Office of Legislative Legal Services summary of CORA. Tennessee and Illinois link to official state guidance rather than to a code page, because neither state serves the chapter text at a stable public URL.

This page provides general legal information about public records and FOIA statutes in the United States as of August 2026. It is not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created by reading it. Statutes, fee schedules and agency procedures change; confirm the current text with the linked official source before relying on a deadline or fee figure, and consult a lawyer licensed in the relevant jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a fee to file a public records request?

Filing itself is free in nearly every jurisdiction. What costs money is copying and, in many states, staff time. Federal FOIA gives non-commercial requesters the first two hours of search and the first 100 pages at no charge, so a narrow request often costs nothing. State per-page caps run from 5 cents in Massachusetts to $1.00 a page in New Mexico, and several states give free tiers: Illinois waives the first 50 pages, Delaware the first 20, Minnesota charges nothing to inspect records on site, and Iowa charges nothing for records that take under 30 minutes to produce. Ask for a cost estimate up front and set a ceiling in the request so nothing gets billed without your approval.

Can I request records from a state I do not live in?

In most states, yes. The default rule is that any person may request, and Washington's statute goes further by barring agencies from distinguishing among requesters at all. Five states limit the statutory right to their own residents: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Kentucky's definition is broad enough to cover anyone who works in or owns property in the state, along with news-gathering organizations. Idaho lets anyone request but gives non-residents 21 days for a decision instead of 3 and 35 days for production instead of 10. Pennsylvania is not a resident-only state, but its Right-to-Know Law defines a requester as "a person that is a legal resident of the United States," so someone living abroad has no statutory right to file there. New Jersey is often listed as resident-only and should not be, because its operative clause says any person. An agency in a resident-only state may still fill a non-resident's request voluntarily; what a non-resident lacks is the enforceable right to make it.

What can I do if the agency just ignores my request?

Check first whether your state converts silence into a denial. Arizona, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Virginia all treat a missed deadline as a denial, which gives you something to appeal from, and in the District silence also exhausts your administrative remedies so you can go straight to Superior Court. Where an administrative body exists, that is the cheap route: the Connecticut FOI Commission, the Illinois Public Access Counselor, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, the New Jersey Government Records Council, the Massachusetts Supervisor of Records, the New Hampshire and Wyoming ombudsman offices, and the Ohio Court of Claims all take complaints without a lawyer. Several states let you petition the Attorney General instead, including Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota and Oregon. In court-only states the remedy is a suit to compel disclosure, and most of those statutes shift costs and attorney's fees to a requester who prevails.

Are police reports and body camera footage covered?

Basic incident and arrest reports are generally public, though states often let an agency withhold active investigative files. Body camera footage is treated far less uniformly. South Carolina excludes it from its FOIA entirely under S.C. Code section 23-1-240(G)(1). North Carolina and Kentucky built separate statutes with their own requester lists. The District of Columbia keeps it inside FOIA but gives it a 25-day clock instead of 15. Minnesota makes footage public when it documents a firearm discharge or a use of force causing substantial bodily harm. Washington and Ohio allow redaction and production charges rather than blocking access. Several states, including Michigan, North Dakota and Florida, exempt recordings made in private places. The practical step is to identify the state's dedicated body camera provision before filing, because the general records statute may not be the right route.

How long does a federal FOIA request actually take?

The statutory clock in 5 U.S.C. section 552 is 20 days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal public holidays, for the agency to make a determination and tell you, with up to 10 more working days available on written notice of unusual circumstances. That is a deadline to decide, not to deliver. In practice, agency reporting shows most requests classified as simple closing inside the 20-day band, while requests classified as complex spread across much longer periods, some past 400 days. The executive branch received about 1.7 million requests in fiscal year 2025 across roughly a hundred agencies. Narrowing scope, filing with the specific agency component that holds the records, and answering clarification emails quickly are the three things that most reliably shorten the wait.

Does a public records request have to say why I want the records?

Almost never. New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Rhode Island expressly bar an agency from requiring a reason, and Washington bars asking about purpose except to check narrow statutory exemptions. Illinois allows two narrow questions under 5 ILCS 140/3(c): whether the request is for a commercial purpose, because that changes the deadline and the fee tier, and, where you have asked for a fee waiver, what your purpose is, because 5 ILCS 140/6(c) makes the waiver turn on it. The federal FOIA does not require a reason either, though stating one helps if you are asking for a fee waiver or for expedited processing, both of which turn on why the records matter.

Do I need to be a journalist or a lawyer to file?

No. Every one of these statutes is written for the general public. Journalist status matters only in specific places and only for cost or speed: federal FOIA puts news media in the duplication-only fee category, Utah presumes a request for a story or broadcast benefits the public and qualifies for a 5-business-day expedited response, and Kentucky and Nebraska fold news-gathering organizations into their residency and fee definitions. Nothing about the underlying right to the records depends on your occupation.