FOIA Gen
Deadlines
In FOIA Gen, choose Deadlines. A calendar shows the month's deadlines, and the list below groups every open deadline by week, starting with any that are past due.
Watch the video
Deadlines and Follow-ups2:45 video| Your move | Something you must do by then: answer a fee estimate or a question, confirm you're still interested, or appeal. |
|---|---|
| Agency's move | When the agency must acknowledge, decide or release. |
| Past due | The date has passed. |
| Paused — waiting on you | The agency's clock is stopped while it waits for your answer to a fee estimate or a question. A paused deadline is never past due; it gets its new date, with the days that were left, when you reply. |
Each deadline says what the law requires, with its citation, and is counted the way that jurisdiction counts: in business days, skipping weekends and its own public holidays, or in calendar days where the law says so. Deadlines start when the request is sent, submitted on a portal or mailed, and move by themselves when the agency acknowledges it, extends it, asks you a question or sends a fee estimate. While the agency is waiting on you, its own clock is paused.
When the agency's letter gives you a date to reply by, that is your deadline. When it gives none, FOIA Gen uses the time the jurisdiction's law gives you to reply, where the law sets one (Texas, for example, gives 10 business days to answer a fee estimate); otherwise the deadline has no fixed date and FOIA Gen checks in after 10 business days. FOIA Gen never makes up a date.
Where the law only says promptly, there is no fixed date; FOIA Gen checks in after 10 business days.
Two business days before a deadline, and when one passes, FOIA Gen notes it in the request's history. A request is under Needs you whenever it's your move (a fee estimate, a question, an appeal window), and as soon as the agency misses one of its deadlines: the request then shows The agency missed a deadline with Point it out, and keeps the status the agency last gave it, because the agency hasn't asked you anything. A request whose law only says promptly goes under Needs you after 10 business days with no answer, with Time to check in with the agency. FOIA Gen also emails you when one of your deadlines is two business days away and when the agency misses one; choose how in the Inbox's Email me card (see Email alerts).
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