The Free Expression Legal Network is a nationwide coalition of law school clinics, academics, and practitioners focused on promoting and protecting free speech, free press, and the free flow of information to an informed and engaged citizenry. The network allows members to better share resources and expertise, while collaborating on projects to defend the constitutional rights of free speech and a free press. FELN members have handled a diverse array of cases in recent years.

Each state has its own laws about making documents, data and other records accessible to the public. There are also separate public records laws for the federal agencies, the District of Columbia, and territories. The data in this interactive database is drawn from MuckRock's database and from work by Miranda Spivack.

Tunis Cole was obviously proud of his service in the war and his role in the fight for American freedom. The Revolutionary War veteran hoped that he could have some measure of financial security in his old age. Cole's 1848 pension application was written, like thousands of other veterans' applications, by hand. Now, almost 250 years later, Americans are hearing a new call to arms. Citizen archivists are needed to transcribe original pension applications from the nation's first veterans into a massive database − and help reveal their extraordinary and untold stories.

A nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization (New York Coalition for Open Government) is calling on New York agencies to perform better tracking of Freedom of Information Law requests after it sought and reviewed data from about 70 agencies. The state has a backlog of FOIA request, some dating back to more than 3 years ago.

Public unrest.

That’s what Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, fears would happen if the public were made privy to the state government’s deliberative records — records they can already access. Public safety is the justification for Cloud’s Senate Bill 482, which would create one of the broadest ever public records exemptions for state government.

It’s not often an overwhelming majority of New Jersey residents agree on something, but both Republicans and Democrats appear to be united in rejecting changes to the state’s Open Public Records Act.s.

An Alabama Senate committee Tuesday approved a bill that would require state agencies to acknowledge and respond to public records requests within a certain timeframe.The bill would give requestors the right to sue if the request has not been approved or denied or if the records have not been produced after fees are paid within 30 business days or 60 calendar days.

McMakin’s House Bill 116 removes privacy protections for personnel records of public employees. The bill would undo case law that has put up significant roadblocks to those wanting to access records related to investigations into public employee misconduct. McMakin believes shielding those records from public view is wrong.

Florida lawmakers approved 16 new public records exemptions in the 2024 legislative session, according to the First Amendment Foundation. Getting public records in Florida increasingly takes waiting months, shelling out hundreds if not thousands of dollars, hiring a lawyer and in one recent case even having the police called.

EveAttorney General Gentner Drummond has become the first ever attorney general to receive the Sunshine Award from Freedom of Information (FOI) Oklahoma. The prestigious honor is awarded each year to a public official for showing a commitment to open meetings and open records.

Every year, Sunshine Week is held during the Month of March. Sunshine Week is a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.

“I’ve filed thousands of requests in my career. Here’s how I do it, step by step.”

Washington State Code leaves no question that the government must remain open to the people. So it’s disheartening to read WashCOG’s recent assessment that public access to records is as bad as it’s been over the past half-century.

“Over the last couple of years, a mystery has been brewing in this small mountain town. Someone has been quietly buying hundreds of acres of land — stirring worries about rising housing prices and speculation among locals about what exactly is going on.”

Wisconsin law does not require nursing home management to notify staff or residents a sex offender resides in the facility, leaving it up to individual families to proactively seek the information. 2 News Investigates cross-referenced a list of licensed nursing home facilities in Wisconsin with the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website. The results showed there are 30 sex offenders living at 25 nursing homes across the state. Nineteen are living at facilities in southeast Wisconsin.

Local governments in the St. Louis area could request radioactive waste testing from the state under a Missouri House bill that would appropriate money to a long-unfunded program. State Rep. Paula Brown, a Democrat from Hazelwood, noted that activists for years told the EPA the agency didn’t have a handle on where all of the radioactive waste was and urged further testing of the landfill. “Well, they have found it. It is awful…so this is an important bill.”

Simply put, Vermont’s public records law is intended to ensure that the public — and thereby reporters — have access to documents produced by state or local governments. It seems that some state agencies would want to turn the law on its head, using it as a shield to deny reporters timely access to what should be readily available public information.

Investigate Midwest attempted to obtain farmworker housing inspection records from all 50 states, but it was stymied. So far, the newsroom has obtained and analyzed thousands of inspections records from 19 states.

Requests for public documents, such as those that unearthed the shady sale of public land in Webster and over-inflated taxes in Nashua, could become pricey under a bill that cleared the House Thursday but will go before lawmakers again next week for reconsideration. The bill allows public bodies and agencies to charge up to $25 an hour for record searches that take longer than 10 hours. Under the existing right-to-know law, local and state bodies can charge for copying records but not record searches.

Wouldn’t Hillsborough County taxpayers like to know how much of their money the state is holding from an ill-fated transportation tax? We thought so, too — which is why I have been asking state agencies that question for weeks, to no avail. The figure is north of $569 million, but exactly how far north, they won’t tell me. Unfortunately, there’s a big difference in Florida between the open government laws and open government in practice.