What are the nine FOIA exemptions?

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) presumes that federal records should be released to the public on request. That presumption gives way only when information falls within one of nine specific exemptions. Agencies must still release any reasonably segregable, non-exempt portion of a record, redacting only the protected material.

The nine exemptions

1. National security — information properly classified to protect national defense or foreign policy.
2. Internal personnel rules and practices — records related solely to an agency’s internal personnel matters.
3. Information exempted by other statutes — material that another federal law specifically prohibits from disclosure.
4. Trade secrets and confidential commercial or financial information obtained from a person.
5. Privileged inter- or intra-agency communications — the “deliberative process,” attorney-client, and attorney work-product privileges.
6. Personal privacy — personnel, medical, and similar files whose disclosure would be a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
7. Law enforcement records — information that could, for example, interfere with proceedings, deprive someone of a fair trial, invade privacy, reveal sources, or endanger safety.
8. Financial institution supervision — records related to the regulation of financial institutions.
9. Geological information — geological and geophysical data, including maps, concerning wells.

How exemptions are applied

An exemption is a permission to withhold, applied carefully and narrowly. Reviewers examine responsive records line by line, withholding only what an exemption genuinely covers and releasing the rest. When information is withheld, the agency must indicate the amount withheld and the exemption relied on, unless doing so would itself harm a protected interest.

Why recordkeeping matters here

FOIA exemptions only come into play after an agency has found the responsive records. An agency that cannot locate its records cannot apply the exemptions correctly or respond on time. Sound records management — well-organized, well-retained, findable records — is what makes accurate, timely, and defensible FOIA responses possible.

Most U.S. states have their own public-records laws with comparable (though not identical) categories of exempt information, so the specifics vary outside the federal context.