What Is Public Records in the US? A Guide to Open Records Requests

A reporter emails a 50-page public records request on Monday afternoon. Your statutory clock starts ticking before your coffee gets cold. Some jurisdictions give you 20 days, and others give you three. Every disclosable document has to go out the door, and not one Social Security number can slip out with it.

If that sounds like defusing a bomb with a spreadsheet, welcome to records management. This guide answers a question that more people have than you might expect: what is public records in the US? It also covers how state and local rules work in places like Washington, Phoenix, and Florida for example, and how your team can keep up with the workload.

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What Is Public Records in the US?

Public records are documents, recordings, and data created, received, or held by a government-funded entity in the course of its work. The principle is simple. Taxpayers fund the agency, so the public generally gets to see how the sausage is made.

An open records request (also called a public records request depending on who’s asking) is a legally enforceable demand from a member of the public. Reporters, law firms, researchers, competitors, and curious neighbors all file them. The agency must then release the requested records or explain which legal exemption justifies withholding them.

The category covers far more than most people realize:

• Written documents: police incident reports, meeting minutes, building permits, vendor contracts, and internal memos.
• Digital and textual communications: emails, staff text messages on public devices, chat logs, and spreadsheets.
• Multimedia assets: 911 audio, dashcam footage, body-worn camera video, and crime scene photography.

Here is where records teams hit the wall. Public records rarely arrive as tidy, share-ready files. They come loaded with personally identifiable information, protected health information, trade secrets, and details from active investigations. Every file needs careful redaction before it can leave your servers.

FOIA vs. Open Records Requests: Federal and Local Rules

People use “FOIA” as a catch-all term for any records request. The Freedom of Information Act is a federal law, and it applies to executive branch agencies such as the FBI and the EPA. You can read how the federal process works at FOIA.gov.

Your county sheriff, city council, public university, and municipal water district operate under state open records statutes. Three differences matter most:

1. Deadlines. Federal agencies work under a 20-business-day response window. State laws vary widely, with some requiring a response in 10 days and others in as few as three business days.
2. Exemptions. A record that is exempt in Ohio may be fully public in Florida.
3. Residency. Federal FOIA lets anyone request records, and certain state laws limit requests to residents of that state.

Redaction software like CaseGuard allows you to handle multiple statutory standards, saving you from rebuilding your workflow every time the rules change at a state line.

As we can see, things get tricky when comparing open records requests from state to state. That’s why we picked three states and localities to represent what the process looks like in different parts of the country.

Public Records Request in Washington State

Washington’s Public Records Act, found in chapter 42.56 of the Revised Code of Washington, is one of the broadest transparency laws in the country. Under the act, an agency must respond within five business days of receiving a request. That response can be the records themselves, an acknowledgment with a reasonable time estimate, or a denial with an explanation.

A public records request in Washington State can cover nearly any record an agency holds. The act favors disclosure, so exemptions are read narrowly. The agency must also identify the specific exemption it relies on and explain how it applies. A long document set therefore needs line-by-line review, and every redaction needs a documented reason.

Phoenix Public Records Request

Arizona’s public records law, A.R.S. 39-121, gives people the right to inspect and copy public records. The statute asks agencies to produce records promptly, and the word “promptly” invites plenty of debate when a backlog is stacking up.

A Phoenix public records request typically starts through the city’s online request portal. A request covering police reports, body-camera footage, or 911 audio will contain victim details, juvenile information, and other protected data. Staff must locate each instance of that data and remove it before release.

Florida Public Records Request

Florida may be the most famous open-government state in the country. Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes, known with some affection as the Sunshine Law’s records cousin, establishes a broad right of access. A Florida public records request does not require the requester to state a reason, and agencies must respond within a reasonable time.

Florida adds a second layer of work through its many statutory exemptions and its constitutional victim-privacy protections. Our companion article on Marsy’s Law and PDF redaction explains how those protections reshaped record releases across the state.

What Happens When an Agency Misses the Mark?

Missing a deadline and releasing too much information both carry real costs.

Delay and improper withholding. When a requester sues over an unjustified delay or denial and wins, courts often order the agency to pay the requester’s attorney fees. Those fees can climb into six figures.

Improper redaction. A clerk racing the clock opens a standard PDF viewer and draws black boxes over the sensitive text. The boxes look convincing. Underneath, the original text often stays searchable and copy-pasteable, with extra copies hiding in metadata. Anyone who presses Ctrl+A can then read a victim’s address. This exact mistake has produced regulatory fines, civil privacy lawsuits, and a few very uncomfortable press conferences.

Manual redaction also drives the backlog problem. Reading hundreds of pages, highlighting names, and blacking them out by hand eats labor hours. Meanwhile new requests keep arriving.

How CaseGuard Helps With Open Records Requests

CaseGuard Studio is an all-in-one, AI-driven redaction platform built for public records workflows. It addresses each pain point above:

• AI detection. The software scans multi-page PDFs and identifies names, phone numbers, addresses, Social Security numbers, and credit card numbers across entire document sets in seconds.
• Custom search lists. Type in case numbers, officer names, or statutory keywords once, and CaseGuard redacts every instance across thousands of pages.
• Permanent redaction. Redactions are burned into the document pixels, and hidden metadata, revision histories, and OCR layers are stripped out. The underlying data cannot be recovered.
• Speed. Automating detection lets teams complete PDF redaction up to 32 times faster than manual methods, so days of review shrink to minutes of oversight.
• Local processing. CaseGuard runs on your own hardware, so unredacted records stay inside your network. The platform meets CJIS and SOC 2 security requirements.
• Audit-ready reports. Detailed redaction reports document where and why each redaction was applied, which gives your legal team clear evidence during an audit or a challenge.

Records also arrive as video and audio, so the same platform handles body-camera footage, dashcam video, and 911 recordings. Your team uses one tool for every format.

Let the Sunshine In and Keep the PII Out

Public records laws exist for good reasons, and your agency can honor them without sacrificing privacy or sanity. The right workflow helps you respond on time and release the right information.

Ready to see it in action? Visit CaseGuard.com and book a 30-minute live, personalized demo with one of our privacy experts to watch how it could shrink your backlog of open records requests.