In a recent opinion, the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed that the district’s mayor’s office must publish agency budget requests under the city’s Freedom of Information Act, and that failure to proactively post the records could result in punishment. The case, District of Columbia v. Terris, Pravlik & Millian challenged more than two decades of noncompliance with a 2004 D.C. Council mandate requiring publication online of pre-budget materials. 

The District of Columbia’s public records law is similar to federal FOIA in requiring some records to be posted online proactively, which is uncommon among state public record laws. 

The D.C. Open Government Coalition filed an amicus brief alongside Public Citizen, the ACLU of D.C., and other transparency groups. The issue at hand was determining whether budget requests from the mayor’s office – which starts the budgeting process – are protected by executive communications or shall be posted online for all to see. Also, the court was to decide whether someone could sue to enforce that proactive publication. Typically, one could sue only to challenge a denial from a public records request.

The case stemmed from a 2019 lawsuit filed by a civil rights law firm seeking special education budget data. With no records posted proactively online, the firm sued and won in trial court in 2021. The ruling was upheld by the appeals court on June 5. 

The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to determine the appropriate remedy, potentially including the posting of up to 20 years of overdue records online. The Council has since formally requested the mayor to release the current year’s agency budget submissions. 

 You can read the opinion here. 

Posted: June 24, 2025
Category: Brechner News
Tagged as: Brechner FOI Project, Brechner Freedom of Information Project, Government Transparency, open records laws, public records