FOIA Lawsuit Data Collection Extended

Now including cases back to FY 1993
and FOIA cause of action lawsuits

Thanks to support from the CS Fund/Warsh-Mott Legacy and The Peter and Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation, we have just completed extending our coverage of FOIA lawsuits by four additional years. The site now offers full docket information on 24 years of FOIA district court litigation — any suit filed or ended from FY 1993 (starting October 1, 1992) to the present.

We have also expanded the scope of FOIA cases tracked in other ways. In addition to capturing information on cases for which the PACER nature of suit (NOS) is categorized as FOIA (code 895), we now also include information on cases for which FOIA is identified as the cause of action. Adding this second criterion increased our coverage by about 20%.

As of today, FOIAProject.org provides access to more than 30,000 documents from over 10,000 cases filed in district courts since October 1, 1992 that were labeled by the courts as FOIA either by nature of suit or cause of action. These counts don’t include court of appeals cases which FOIAproject also tracks; we had previously extended our coverage of court of appeals cases as far back in time as PACER allows.

We check for new and updated lawsuit data every weekday. There are several tools on the site that let you keep track of updates:

• the Recent Docket Events tool, which identifies activity on existing cases
• the Lawsuit Search tool, which defaults to documents filed in the most recent 7 day period

Note that whenever electronic copies of case documents — such as complaints and opinions — are available, we try to identify and add these to our collection. However, electronic versions are not always available, particularly for cases filed earlier than fiscal year 2002.

If you happen to spot a case you think we have missed, or can contribute a document to our collection, we have a handy upload tool. Please help us continue to expand our offerings so everyone can have free access to FOIA material.