For anyone who filed a Freedom of Information request in 2023, it’s no surprise to hear of the mounting challenges to obtaining public records across the country (unless you’re filing a records request via donuts). New exemptions to the law have blocked the public accessing information, including one of the Internet’s favorite memes, “Florida man.”

Next year the Brechner Center will be taking on the challenges of the public records space, as the new host of National Sunshine Week. Sunshine Week was previously led by the News Leader Association and built off Florida Sunshine Sunday, which was founded in 2002.

Have a tip or submission to include in For the Record? Email MuckRock’s engagement journalist, Kelly Kauffman, at kelly@muckrock.com.

The Update

• Sunshine Week to be led by the Brechner Center in 2024: The Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications will educate Americans about the right to public records by coordinating National Sunshine Week, starting in March 2024.

• Call for nominations for the Free Speech and Open Government awards: The First Amendment Coalition opened submissions for its Free Speech & Open Government Awards, which honors the year’s best contributions towards the advancement of open government and freedom of expression and information.

• Three lawsuits on accessing legislative branch information: Daniel Schuman for the POPFOX Foundation dives into three oral arguments before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today that focuses on public access to legislative branch information.

FOIA Finds

• The future of Florida man: In Florida, police reports and mug shots are readily available under the state’s Sunshine law, giving news outlets quick access to information about arrests. But now, new exemptions to Florida’s Sunshine Law have weakened it and could endanger news coverage of the prototypical “Florida man,” reports C.J. Ciaramella at Reason.

• The state of public records requests in 2023: Aaron Gordon at Vice filed 136 identical public records requests with police departments around the country. Of those requests, roughly half of the agencies fulfilled them, and Gordon explains what he learned and the increasing challenges to accessing public documents.

• Accessing public information in Canada: Tom Cardoso and Robyn Doolittle at The Globe and Mail launched an investigation of Canada’s broken FOI systems, nicknamed “Secret Canada,” that contains more than 300,000 FOI summaries for federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments, much like MuckRock’s FOIA Log Explorer for U.S. agencies.