Understanding FOIA: The One-Way Street of Transparency
What happens when procedural obligation flows in only one direction.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Transparency is not a gift. It is a statutory obligation. The Freedom of Information Act does not ask agencies to disclose records. It requires them to.
That requirement is enforceable—but only if the requester has the time, resources, and persistence to force compliance.
FOIA operates as a one-way street. The law imposes strict procedural requirements on requesters and enforces them immediately. Miss a deadline, lose your appeal rights. File in the wrong format, see your request rejected. Fail to respond to a clarification, watch your case close.
Agencies face the same statutory obligations. They must respond within twenty days. They must conduct reasonable searches. They must justify withholding.
But when agencies miss deadlines, nothing happens. When they delay for months, the requester waits. When they close requests without explanation, the only recourse is more process—more waiting, more appeals, more litigation.
The burden of enforcement falls entirely on the public.
FOIA does not fail because the statute is poorly written. It fails because it relies on requesters to enforce it. Most cannot. Most do not have the money, the legal expertise, or the institutional backing to sustain prolonged administrative battles.
Agencies know this. They operate within it.
The result is predictable: transparency becomes selective. Agencies respond to requesters who pose reputational risk or have media visibility. They delay, ignore, or dismiss requesters who lack leverage.
The law applies equally. The outcomes do not.
This is not speculation. It is observable. It is documented. It is the operational reality of a system that places all accountability on those with the least power to enforce it.
FOIA was designed to eliminate favoritism in access to government records. It has instead created a mechanism where favoritism thrives—not through explicit policy, but through discretion, delay, and the quiet knowledge that most requesters will give up before reaching a courtroom.
Transparency delayed is transparency denied. Not by law, but by design.
The street runs one way. Requesters must follow every rule. Agencies must only wait for someone to make them.