Freedom of Information

Attorneys seeking records from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services hope that a strongly worded opinion released recently by a federal judge criticizing the agency for failing to quickly and adequately respond to a federal Freedom of Information Act request will push the agency to change how it responds to other FOIA requests.

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday expressed frustration that the state's open meetings law contains no definition for what constitutes a public meeting, forcing the court to define the statute's limits each time a new challenge arises.

In oral arguments in McCutchen v. Fort Smith, the central issue in the case is whether an administrator's action of scheduling a series of individual meetings with members of the city's board of directors to discuss a memo he prepared constituted a meeting under the state's Freedom of Information Act.

Government attorneys confirmed on Tuesday that federal courts have the right under the federal Freedom of Information Act to review agency decisions to classify documents when invoking the law's national security exemption.

Despite a judge recently modifying a gag order in the case of alleged theater shooter James Holmes, journalists are having a difficult time accessing records to report on the high-profile case.

“We get lots of tiny bits and pieces and have to paste these parts together to make sense out of what seems like a senseless mass shooting,” Denver reporter Rick Sallinger said.

A history professor hopes that a federal court's recent order to release long-sealed Watergate documents will shed light on the motivations behind the infamous 1972 scandal and help set an example for how to unseal court records.