Virginia Freedom of Information Act: Who Can Request and How (2026)

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act, Va. Code § 2.2-3700 et seq., opens state and local records to citizens of the Commonwealth and to the press circulating in Virginia. Public bodies must respond within five working days, and denials are enforced by petition for mandamus or injunction.

Virginia FOIA is not federal FOIA. Virginia chose the same name the federal government uses, which causes constant confusion. The federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, reaches only federal executive branch agencies, allows requests from any person anywhere in the world, and runs on a 20 working day clock. Virginia FOIA reaches Virginia state and local public bodies, limits requesters to citizens of the Commonwealth and qualifying press, and runs on a five working day clock. Filing the wrong one at the wrong body gets you nothing. For the federal process, see our FOIA request guide.

Who Can File a Virginia FOIA Request

This is the first question to settle, because Virginia is unusual. Va. Code § 2.2-3704(A) provides:

"Except as otherwise specifically provided by law, all public records shall be open to citizens of the Commonwealth, representatives of newspapers and magazines with circulation in the Commonwealth, and representatives of radio and television stations broadcasting in or into the Commonwealth during the regular office hours of the custodian of such records."

Two groups therefore have the statutory right: citizens of the Commonwealth, and media representatives whose outlet circulates or broadcasts in or into Virginia. An out-of-state individual with no Virginia connection and no press affiliation is outside the class the statute names.

That restriction has been tested at the highest level. In McBurney v. Young, 569 U.S. 221 (2013), non-Virginians challenged the citizens-only limit under the Privileges and Immunities Clause and the dormant Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court upheld Virginia FOIA unanimously, reasoning that the Act creates a state-law right rather than restricting a fundamental privilege of national citizenship, and noting that non-residents retained other avenues, including Virginia's separate provisions for land records and litigation discovery.

Practical consequences worth knowing:

• Being outside the class is not the same as being barred from the record. A public body may still choose to respond to a non-resident, and many routinely do. It just is not obligated to.
• Some record categories are open to everyone by other statutes. Land records, court records, and certain professional licensing information run under their own regimes.
• Closed criminal investigative files carry their own residency carve-out. Va. Code § 2.2-3706.1(D) requires that such records be disclosed, by request, to the victim, a deceased victim's immediate family members, a minor victim's parent or guardian, and habeas corpus or actual innocence counsel, regardless of whether any such person is a citizen of the Commonwealth. See the police records section below for the full list and its conditions.
• A public body may require you to provide your name and legal address. Virginia FOIA permits a body to confirm the requester falls within the class the statute covers.

Most states go the other way. Compare Washington, whose Public Records Act directs that agencies "shall not distinguish among persons requesting records," and West Virginia, whose FOIA gives the right to "every person." The full residency picture across the country is on the public records laws by state hub.

The Five Working Day Deadline

Va. Code § 2.2-3704(B) requires the public body to respond "promptly, but in all cases within five working days of receiving a request." Note what the statute promises: a response, not necessarily the records. The body must either provide the requested records or make one of four written responses:

1. The records are being withheld entirely, with the specific volume of the Code of Virginia that authorizes it;
2. The records are being withheld in part, with the same citation, and the rest is produced;
3. The requested records could not be found or do not exist, with a referral to another public body if the body knows one holds them; or
4. It is not practically possible to provide the records or to determine whether they are available within five working days, specifying the conditions that make a response impossible.

The fourth response buys time, not silence. If it is made within the original five working days, the public body gets an additional seven work days to give one of the four responses. For a request for criminal investigative files under § 2.2-3706.1, the extension is 60 work days instead.

The clock counts working days, so weekends and holidays do not count against the body. A request received Monday is generally due the following Monday.

Silence is itself a denial and a violation. This is the provision most Virginia requesters never learn, and it changes what a non-response is worth. Va. Code § 2.2-3704(E) reads that failure to respond to a request for records shall be deemed a denial of the request and shall constitute a violation of this chapter. A public body that simply lets the five working days pass has not left you in limbo waiting for an answer. It has denied you, and it has broken the statute, and both facts are already established when you walk into court. Pair that with § 2.2-3713(E), under which any failure to follow the chapter's procedures is presumed to be a violation, and an ignored request is a stronger case than a reasoned refusal.

How to Make a Virginia FOIA Request

Virginia has no central FOIA portal. Requests go to the specific public body that holds the record: a state agency, a county or city, a school board, a sheriff's office, a public university, or a local authority.

The Act is deliberately informal about form. Section 2.2-3704(B) provides that a request must identify the requested records with reasonable specificity, and that the request "need not make reference to this chapter in order to invoke the provisions of this chapter." Virginia FOIA does not require the request to be in writing at all.

Write it anyway. A written request creates a dated record that fixes when the five working day clock started, which is the single most useful fact in any later dispute.

A workable Virginia request does five things:

1. Names the public body and its FOIA officer. State agencies and most localities publish a FOIA officer contact.
2. States that you are a citizen of the Commonwealth (or identifies your qualifying media outlet), since the body is entitled to confirm this.
3. Describes records with reasonable specificity. Custodian, date range, subject, and record type. Not "all documents about the rezoning."
4. Sets a cost ceiling. Ask to be contacted before charges exceed an amount you name.
5. Asks for electronic delivery, which avoids per-page duplication charges.

Our free FOIA request generator assembles a Virginia-formatted request citing § 2.2-3704, including the citizenship statement and a cost ceiling. It runs in your browser and stores nothing.

What Virginia FOIA Charges Cost

As of August 2026, a public body may charge reasonable fees not to exceed the actual cost incurred in accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for the requested records. Virginia is one of the states that expressly allows charging for search and review time, which makes a broad request meaningfully more expensive than a narrow one.

The deposit rule is the one to plan around. Where a public body determines in advance that charges for producing the requested records are likely to exceed $200, it may require the requester to pay a deposit not to exceed the amount of that advance determination before continuing to process the request.

The cost estimate mechanics in § 2.2-3704(F)

Subsection (F) is not just a rate cap. It sets out a sequence with a trap at the end of it.

• Notice before the meter runs. The public body must notify the requester in writing that it may make reasonable charges, and it must offer a cost estimate on request. A charge that arrives only with the invoice is not how the subsection is written.
• The clock stops while you decide. The period within which the public body must respond is tolled for the amount of time that elapses between the notice of the cost estimate and the response of the requester. So a five working day deadline does not keep running while an estimate sits in your inbox, and the body is not in default during that gap.
• Thirty days of silence kills the request. If the public body receives no response from the requester within 30 days of sending the cost estimate, the request shall be deemed to be withdrawn. Nothing further is owed to you, and the five working day clock does not resume. If an estimate is too high, reply and narrow the request rather than letting it sit; a reply keeps the request alive, silence ends it.

A separate rule limits what you can ask for. Section 2.2-3704(D), not (F), is the provision on records that do not exist: no public body shall be required to create a new record if the record does not already exist, although a body may abstract or summarize information under terms and conditions agreed between the requester and the public body. Subsection (F) is the fee subsection.

Watch out: Virginia FOIA does not contain the public-interest fee waiver that federal FOIA provides at 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)(iii). A journalist or nonprofit requesting Virginia records is not entitled to a waiver by statute. The realistic cost controls are a narrower date range, naming specific custodians instead of a whole department, asking for native electronic files, and asking to inspect rather than to purchase copies.

If Virginia Denies Your Request

Virginia has no administrative appeal step and no attorney general review of records denials. There is a non-litigation option and a judicial one, and it is worth trying them in that order.

The Virginia FOIA Advisory Council

Before you file anything, the General Assembly maintains a body whose job is to answer exactly this kind of question. The Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council is established at Va. Code §§ 30-178 et seq., and § 30-179(1) directs it to furnish, upon request, advisory opinions or guidelines and other appropriate information regarding the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and to do so in an expeditious manner. The Council's opinions are advisory rather than binding, so it cannot order a public body to hand over a record. What it can do is put a considered reading of the statute in writing, which frequently ends a dispute with a public body that was applying the Act incorrectly rather than resisting it. That is a far cheaper first move than a petition.

Mandamus or injunction under § 2.2-3713

Under Va. Code § 2.2-3713(A), a person denied the rights and privileges conferred by the chapter may enforce them by filing a petition for mandamus or injunction. Venue lies in the general district court or the circuit court, and general district court matters in practice because it avoids circuit court filing costs and is built for self-represented litigants.

Be precise about what the statute says on counsel, because it is narrower than it is often repeated. Section 2.2-3713(B) provides that in an action brought before a general district court, a corporate petitioner may appear through its officer, director, or managing agent without the assistance of counsel. That is a dispensation for entities, which would normally need a lawyer to appear at all. An individual has always been able to represent themselves; the subsection is not what gives them that right.

Three features of § 2.2-3713 make it stronger than it looks:

• Speed, with a service condition. The petition shall be heard within seven days of the date when it is made, provided the party against whom the petition is brought has received a copy of the petition at least three working days prior to filing. Miss that step and you lose the seven day setting, so serve the public body first and keep proof of the date.
• Burden. The public body bears the burden of proof to establish an exclusion by a preponderance of the evidence, and any failure by the public body to follow the procedures established by the chapter is presumed to be a violation.
• Fee shifting. A petitioner who substantially prevails recovers reasonable costs, including expert witness costs and fees, and attorney fees from the public body, unless special circumstances would make an award unjust. That provision is what makes a small records case economically viable.

Police Records and Body Camera Footage in Virginia

Law enforcement records run through Va. Code § 2.2-3706.1, which separates two things that requesters often merge.

Criminal incident information is mandatory. For a felony, the public body must release basic incident information: a general description of the criminal activity reported, the date and time the alleged crime was committed, the general location, the identity of the investigating officer, and a general description of any injuries or property damage.

The investigative file itself is excluded from mandatory disclosure, with discretion to release. Get the mechanism right, because it explains why two identical requests get different answers. Criminal investigative files are defined to include complaints, court orders, memoranda, notes, diagrams, maps, photographs, correspondence, reports, witness statements, and evidence relating to a criminal investigation or prosecution. Section 2.2-3706.1(C) provides that files relating to an ongoing investigation or proceeding are excluded from the mandatory disclosure provisions of the chapter but may be disclosed by the custodian in his discretion, and § 2.2-3706.1(D) says the same of files relating to an investigation or proceeding that is not ongoing. So the baseline for both is the same: you have no right to the file, and the custodian may hand it over if it chooses.

What separates them is subsection (E). It lists the circumstances in which information shall not be disclosed, including where release would interfere with an ongoing investigation, jeopardize a fair trial, constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy, reveal a confidential source or a law enforcement technique, or endanger someone's safety. Subsection (E) applies to (C) and (D) alike, and where it bites it removes the custodian's discretion entirely. The practical outcome on an open case is what most requesters already expect, but the route there is exclusion plus a mandatory bar, not a discretionary judgment call about interference.

Closed files carry a disclosure right that ignores residency. This is the most useful provision on the page for the people most likely to need it. Where the investigation or proceeding is not ongoing, § 2.2-3706.1(D) provides that the records shall be disclosed, by request, to a defined list of people, expressly "regardless of whether any such person is a citizen of the Commonwealth":

• the victim;
• the victim's immediate family members, if the victim is deceased and the family member receiving the records is not a person of interest or a suspect;
• the parent or guardian of a minor victim, on the same not-a-suspect condition;
• an attorney representing a petitioner in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus or a writ of actual innocence under Chapter 19.2 of Title 19.2, or in any other federal or state post-conviction proceeding or pardon; and
• for the sole purpose of inspection where the records are kept, an attorney or agent considering such a representation, an attorney who swears a declaration that they have been retained for a civil or criminal action and have a good faith basis to believe the records are material to it, and a person proceeding pro se in a habeas or actual innocence petition.

The residency carve-out matters because the general rule at § 2.2-3704(A) is the opposite. A grieving out-of-state parent, or post-conviction counsel licensed elsewhere, does not have to clear the citizens-of-the-Commonwealth hurdle to reach a closed criminal investigative file under (D). Subsection (E) still applies, and attorneys receiving records under this subsection are subject to restrictions on further dissemination.

Two timing points matter for anyone requesting police material in Virginia. First, the extension for criminal investigative files is 60 work days rather than the ordinary seven, so a request that touches an investigative file can lawfully take far longer than a routine one. Second, the Public Records Act sections do not create a dedicated body camera release track of the kind Washington codified at RCW 42.56.240(14), so footage is analyzed under the § 2.2-3706.1 framework and the general exclusions, together with any policy the individual department has adopted.

If your goal is to learn whether charges or a warrant exist rather than to obtain the file, the courts are usually the faster route. See Virginia warrant search.

Records Virginia FOIA Does Not Reach

Vital records. Birth, death, and marriage certificates are not FOIA requests. They come from the Virginia Department of Health, Division of Vital Records, under eligibility rules that limit certified copies to specific relatives and representatives. See Virginia death records.

Land records. Deeds, deeds of trust, and liens are recorded with the circuit court clerk in each locality and searched there. See Virginia property records. This category matters for the residency question, because land records are open under their own statute rather than under § 2.2-3704, a point the Supreme Court relied on in McBurney.

Emergency call audio. Whether a 911 recording is releasable turns on the state and on whether an investigation is open. See are 911 calls public records.

This article is general legal information about the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as of August 2026. It is not legal advice, and RecordingLaw.com is not a law firm. Statutes, fee practices, and agency policies change. Consult an attorney licensed in Virginia about a specific records dispute.