State Freedom of Information Requests /FOIA

About State Freedom of Information Requests

Each state has unique laws and regulations governing public records requests, and our team is skilled at navigating all of them. Our firm regularly submits requests for records to publicly funded state agencies and organizations, such as health departments, universities, and hospitals.

We have extensive experience successfully navigating the bureaucratic labyrinth of requests, appeals, and suits in order to obtain government records. We have submitted hundreds of requests at the state level and have a reputation with many government agencies for being efficient, persistent, and tenacious.

Unmatched Experience Navigating the Labyrinth of State Public Records

Our state public records request practice supports clients across a variety of areas and has handled requests to numerous state agencies and public institutions across the country, including, by way of example, requests to state health departments in New York, California, Louisiana, and Wisconsin, state universities in California, Iowa, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas, and public healthcare systems in Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Michigan. Requests we have handled range from college chancellor emails, 911 dispatch records, employee policy records, school board meeting minutes, records related to data breaches, public agency contracts, nursing home data, clinical trial data, and more.

As discussed in the following clip by the firm’s Managing Partner, Aaron Siri, the process is often lengthy and convoluted, but we are relentless in assuring we achieve the goals set by our clients:

Finding Connections Where Others Don’t

Our FOIA team diligently reviews hundreds of thousands of pages produced by government agencies, which include records such as emails, instant messages, reports, data, contracts, agreements, and meeting records. Some of the items we review for are inappropriate conduct, conflicts of interest, corruption, evidence of agency capture, and contradictions between the agency’s public statements and what was discussed behind closed doors. Our years of experience combing through these complex documents means that we see connections and patterns that others often miss.

Challenging Redactions and “No Records Found”

The documents produced typically contain redactions, or the agency will deny the existence of the records entirely. Our team has submitted numerous appeals in states across the country to challenge improper redactions and to fight for records that we have reason to believe exist.

In the event that our client is not satisfied with an agency’s response or the outcome of an appeal, our attorneys quickly and skillfully proceed to litigation. You can see a list of notable cases we have handled where the government refused to produce records or made improper redactions on our federal FOIA page.