More than 50 years ago, Michael Ross Lemov was still a young, intrepid general counsel who had just finished working on the National Commission on Product Safety, the forerunner to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That was the time, he told me, that he started working for the late California Congressman John Moss, the primary author, the champion and the driving force behind the Freedom of Information Act.
This marked the beginning of a friendship, mentorship and joint commitment to American democracy and open government. Mind you, Moss had already single-handedly brought the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA into being in 1966. Lemov joined him later to further expand the groundbreaking law and further fight for a mountain of consumer protections. In 1997 when Moss died, Lemov kept a promise and detailed Moss’s story in a book, “People’s Warrior: John Moss and the Fight for Freedom of Information and Consumer Rights,” thus bringing to light a battle most of us never knew about a law that all of us need to know. In spring of this year, Lemov died. Now, the lives of both men have become intertwined and held up as a bright light to all who seek a path forward to a more truthful and better America.
This week, on the Fourth of July, we celebrate FOIA’s 58th anniversary and are reminded of what these two men — Moss and Lemov — meant for our country.
Lemov said it took Moss 12 years, three presidents and a battle against his fellow members of Congress to bring FOIA into being. President Lyndon Johnson begrudgingly signed FOIA into law at his “Texas White House” on July 4, 1966. It went into effect the following year. In Lemov’s book, he quoted an angry Johnson, “I thought Moss was one of our boys, but the Justice Department tells me this goddamn bill will screw the Johnson administration.” When Johnson signed the bill without any public ceremony, he did not invite Moss to the signing.
FOIA gives any person the right to obtain access to any federal agency records. Enforceable in court, FOIA requires, upon request, the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased or uncirculated information and documents controlled by the U.S. government. In short, FOIA allows the American public to know the truth. And clearly, the numbers tell us the public wants to know.
According to the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (OIP), which encourages and oversees agency compliance, “demand for FOIA reached another record high in FY 2023, surpassing 1.1 million requests received and reflecting a 30% increase compared to FY 2022. In the face of this demand, agencies processed a record high of 1,122,166” FOIA requests.
“FOIA is still a weapon for public information about what its government is up to. Except for an 18th-century Swedish law and a similar information law in Finland in 1951, FOIA was the first open government law in the world,” said Lemov. “Moss fought for 12 years, against three presidents and at times his own party, for a freedom of information law that has stood the test of time and been copied around the world.”
Lemov said Freedom of information laws allow access to government information in well over 100 countries. The United Nations has even set aside a day globally — the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI) — held every 28th day of September. The UN wholeheartedly agrees that “universal access to information means that everyone has the right to seek, receive and impart information. This right is an integral part of the right to freedom of expression.”
If the recent presidential debate is any indication, FOIA is and will be an important human right that will be exercised repeatedly before, during and after the upcoming election. One could say it is truly earning its moniker as the “indispensable tool.”
But Moss and Lemov would be the first to admit that FOIA remains a work in progress. Improvements are needed. Case in point, FOIA only applies to federal agencies and not Congress, the courts, or state or local governments. Also, FOIA contains nine exemptions that include national security and internal government discussions. These remain major barriers to obtaining government files.
As Lemov would often say, “The fight for truth and information is not over. My mentor Moss taught me the fight is never over.”
On this July 4, may all Americans remember what both Moss and Lemov stood for as we never allow the fight for truth and information to never be over.