For an ordinary FOIA request, you do not need to justify your request or in any way demonstrate that you are entitled to the records you are seeking. Your right to records is not based on why you need them or who you are. Thus, many of our requests are a simple template into which we insert a description of the records we are seeking.
However, it is our experience that FOIA processing is more of an art than a science and sometimes, just sometimes, your request reaches someone who is interested in your research and may push a little harder to find records and get them released to you. So, there are some general arguments that you may want to include in your initial request letter.
First, several FOIA exemptions are discretionary and some require a balancing of different interests. If your request involves information likely to be subject to withholding under Exemptions 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9, then you definitely should state that if the agency regards any of the documents as potentially exempt from disclosure under the FOIA, the agency nonetheless should exercise its discretion to disclose them. This kind of argument is quite relevant these days because President Obama had directed agencies to apply a presumption of disclosure, and Attorney General Eric Holder has further instructed that agencies should exercise their discretion to release records, and the Department of Justice has issued detailed guidance to agencies on how to exercise their discretion. (more…)
