How to Request Tennessee Public Records: Fees, Exemptions, and Denials

To request Tennessee public records, contact the government agency that holds them and ask to inspect the records in person for free, or submit a written request for copies. Under Tennessee Code § 10-7-503, any Tennessee citizen can view state, county, and municipal records during business hours, and the custodian has seven business days to respond to a request.¹ The burden is on the agency to justify withholding a record, not on you to justify wanting it.

Who Can Make a Request

The right of access runs to Tennessee citizens. Section 10-7-503(a)(2)(A) opens records to “any citizen of this state,” and the term covers Tennessee prisoners and businesses registered in the state. Agencies are free to share records with non-citizens but aren’t required to.

An agency may ask you to show a government-issued photo ID with a Tennessee address to confirm your citizenship. That is permitted, but it is not the only option. If you don’t have a photo ID showing a Tennessee address, the agency may accept other proof; what qualifies should be spelled out in the agency’s own public records policy.² The standard request form from the Office of Open Records Counsel just asks you to check a box confirming you are a Tennessee citizen.

Finding the Right Agency

Tennessee has no single public records office. Each agency is the custodian for its own records, so the first task is identifying who holds what you need. The most commonly requested categories fall into predictable places:

Court filings, judgments, and dockets sit with the Clerk of Court in the county where the case was filed.
Criminal history information is held by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the state’s central repository.³
Property tax assessments, land values, ownership, and parcel information are kept by the County Assessor of Property.⁴
Birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates come from the Tennessee Department of Health’s Office of Vital Records through its own application process, not the general public records system.⁵
Business entity filings, annual reports, and entity searches are handled by the Secretary of State.⁶
Campaign finance disclosures are published by the Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance through the Registry of Election Finance.⁷
Local police incident reports and accident data are held by the law enforcement agency that responded; active investigation files are not open.

If you’re unsure where a record lives, the Office of Open Records Counsel can point you to the right custodian. Larger agencies also designate a public records request coordinator whose contact information is published for the public.

Making the Request

Inspection and copying follow different rules, and it pays to know which you’re asking for.

To inspect records, you don’t need a written form and you can’t be charged a fee. State law prohibits agencies from requiring a written request or a fee just to view a record, unless another statute specifically says otherwise.¹ You can ask in person, by phone, by fax, by mail, or by email if the agency uses those channels for official business.

To get copies, the agency may require a written request. You can use the standard Public Records Request Form from the Office of Open Records Counsel or any form the specific agency provides.⁸ The OORC form asks for your name and contact information, a citizenship confirmation, a detailed description of the records you want, your delivery preference, and your signature.

The description is where most requests succeed or stall. “All records related to my property” gives the custodian nothing to work with. “Property tax assessment records for parcel 123-45-678 for tax years 2023 through 2025” gets results. Include case numbers, full names, date ranges, and property identifiers whenever you have them.

Send the request to the custodian directly. State-level records go to the relevant department; local records like zoning decisions or building permits go to the municipal or county office with jurisdiction. Many agencies now maintain digital portals for public records requests alongside mail and in-person submission.

Response Times and What Costs to Expect

Once the custodian receives your request, the clock starts. Records must be made available promptly. If that isn’t practical, the agency has seven business days to do one of three things: provide the records, deny the request in writing with a specific legal basis, or give you a written timeline for when the records will be ready.¹ Seven days is the outer limit for that initial response, not necessarily the delivery date. A complex request involving hundreds of pages or heavy redaction can take longer, but the custodian has to tell you so within the seven days rather than leaving you waiting.

Copy Fees

Inspection is free. Copies cost money. The Office of Open Records Counsel publishes a Schedule of Reasonable Charges that caps what agencies can charge: up to $0.15 per standard black-and-white page (8½” × 11″ or 8½” × 14″), and up to $0.50 per color page.⁹ These are ceilings. An agency can charge less.

Labor Charges

The first hour of staff time spent locating, retrieving, reviewing, redacting, and copying records is free. After that hour, the agency can bill for labor, with guardrails: the work must be done by current employees at the lowest practical hourly wage, the rate is based on base salary alone without benefits, and an agency can adopt a more generous free threshold but never a smaller one.⁹

Before starting on copies, the custodian has to give you a cost estimate. You can review it and decide whether to proceed. If you accept a quote, receive the copies, and then don’t pay, the agency can refuse to process any future request from you until the balance is cleared.¹

What Can Be Withheld

Not everything a government office holds is open. Tennessee Code § 10-7-504 lists specific categories of confidential records, and a custodian who claims a record is closed must point to a particular statutory exemption. A vague reference to internal deliberations is not enough, because Tennessee does not recognize a broad deliberative process privilege. The exemptions most often encountered include:

Patient records at state, county, and municipal hospitals and medical facilities, and individually identifiable health information collected by the Department of Health.¹⁰
Investigative files of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Inspector General, and certain other agencies while investigations are pending.¹⁰
Student records at public educational institutions, protected under both Tennessee law and the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.¹¹
Attorney general materials related to pending or contemplated legal proceedings, along with attorney work product and attorney-client communications.
Draft reports and working papers of the Comptroller of the Treasury and internal audit staff while an audit or investigation is underway.¹⁰

Police body camera footage sits in its own category under Tennessee Code § 38-1-704. Recordings are generally part of the public record, but specific exceptions apply based on retention rules and the circumstances of the incident, so whether a particular recording is available has to be evaluated case by case.

If You’re Denied

A denial is not the last word. Tennessee gives you three escalating options, and the law leans in the requester’s favor at each step.

Contact the Office of Open Records Counsel

The OORC was created under Tennessee Code § 8-4-601 to resolve public records disputes without litigation. It answers questions from the public and from government officials, issues informal advisory opinions, and can mediate disagreements between requesters and custodians.¹² Starting here costs nothing and often resolves the issue. OORC opinions are posted publicly, which means a custodian who ignores clear OORC guidance is building a record that can matter later.

File a Court Petition

If informal steps fail, you can petition the chancery court or circuit court in the county where the records are held. For state agency records, you can file in Davidson County, in the county where the records sit, or in the county where you live. The court can order the custodian to appear and explain the denial, and no formal written response from the custodian is required, because the process is designed to move quickly.¹³

Two features tilt the process toward requesters. The burden of proof falls on the custodian to justify withholding the record by a preponderance of the evidence, and courts are directed to construe the law broadly in favor of the “fullest possible public access.”¹³

Attorney’s Fees for Willful Refusal

If the court finds the agency knew the record was public and willfully refused to disclose it, it can order the agency to pay all your reasonable costs, including attorney’s fees. In deciding whether the refusal was willful, the court may consider any guidance the Office of Open Records Counsel previously gave the custodian about the record in question.¹³ That is one reason the OORC step matters: if you asked for their opinion first and the custodian ignored it, that history is evidence in your favor on willfulness.

1
Justia. Tennessee Code 10-7-503 – Records Open to Public Inspection
2
Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury. Tennessee Public Records Act FAQs
3
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Tennessee Open Records Information Services
4
Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury. Division of Property Assessments
5
Tennessee Department of Health. Tennessee Office of Vital Records
6
Tennessee Secretary of State. Businesses
7
Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance. Campaign Finance Disclosure Reports
8
Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury. Public Records Request Form
9
Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury. Schedule of Reasonable Charges
10
Justia. Tennessee Code 10-7-504 – Confidential Records
11
U.S. Department of Education. FERPA Protecting Student Privacy
12
Justia. Tennessee Code 8-4-601 – Creation
13
FindLaw. Tennessee Code 10-7-505 – Public Libraries, Archives and Records