An End to Topictivity: Making All Topics Equally Transparent Under the Freedom of Information Act

Abstract

This article argues that the spirit of American government transparency in the Freedom of Information Act has been partially denied by a focus on particular topics that are protected from disclosure by dozens of other statutes that are less transparent than FOIA but are ironically enabled by its exemptions. FOIA enables such withholding via Exemption 3, which allows the act’s own transparency requirements to be overridden by other more secretive statutes; and via Exemption 9 which focuses on just one specific topic – fossil fuel wells. This results in many esoteric and absurd topics being granted more secrecy in FOIA jurisprudence than other topics that may be equally important for those requesting government-held documents.