Michigan FOIA: Requests, Fees, Denials, and Appeals

To make a Michigan FOIA request, send a written description of the records you want to the public body that holds them. You don’t need to explain why you want them. The agency has five business days to grant the request, deny it, partly grant it, or take a single extension of up to ten more business days.¹ If it denies you, you have 180 days to sue.

How to Submit Your Request

Send the request directly to the agency, department, city, county, township, school district, or other public body that has the records. There is no central FOIA office in Michigan; each public body handles its own requests.

The statute technically allows verbal requests, but put yours in writing. A written request triggers the five-business-day clock, locks in the fee protections, and gives you something to attach to an appeal if things go wrong.²

Describe the records with enough detail that the agency can find them without guesswork. Names, dates, department, subject matter, or a case or file number all help. You can also specify the format you want, whether that’s paper copies, digital files, or another medium, and the public body should accommodate the preference when feasible.

The Response Timeline

Once the public body receives a written request, it has five business days to do one of four things: grant it, deny it in writing with the specific exemption cited, partly grant it, or issue a single extension of up to ten additional business days.¹ Only one extension is allowed. A denial that doesn’t identify the exemption it relies on is defective on its face.

What You Can Be Charged

Public bodies can bill for processing your request, but only within limits set by MCL 15.234, and only under written fee procedures they’ve adopted and made public in advance.³ Every estimate must be itemized. The allowable components are:

Search and retrieval labor, billed at the hourly wage of the lowest-paid employee capable of doing the work, in 15-minute increments with partial increments rounded down.
Paper copies at no more than 10 cents per sheet for standard letter or legal-size paper, with double-sided printing required when it saves money and is available.
Separation labor — the review time needed to redact exempt material — at the same lowest-paid-capable-employee rate. If the agency contracts the work out, the hourly rate can’t exceed six times the state minimum wage.
Duplication labor (making the copies or transferring digital files), again at the lowest-paid capable employee’s rate.
Actual postage using the most economical justifiable method. Expedited shipping or insurance is only chargeable if you ask for it.

If the total estimated fee exceeds $50, the public body can require a good-faith deposit before starting work. That deposit is capped at half the total estimated fee, and the agency has to give you a detailed itemization of projected costs before collecting it.³

Waivers and the Indigent Discount

A public body may waive or reduce fees when it decides that disclosure primarily benefits the general public. That is discretionary; the agency makes the call.³

A separate discount is mandatory for requesters who are indigent or receive public assistance. If you qualify, the first $20 of each request’s fee is waived. You claim it by submitting an affidavit stating that you receive specific public assistance, or, if you don’t, explaining the facts that show you can’t afford the cost. You can use this discount only twice per calendar year with the same public body, and you can’t claim it if someone else is paying you to make the request.³

Which Bodies You Can Request From

FOIA reaches most of state and local government: executive branch agencies, departments, boards, commissions, counties, cities, townships, villages, school districts, special districts, and municipal corporations, along with any body created by or primarily funded through state or local authority.⁴

Several important offices are outside the Act. The Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and their executive offices are expressly excluded from the definition of “public body.” The judiciary is excluded, including the county clerk when acting as clerk to the circuit court. The Senate and House of Representatives are also outside FOIA, though certain legislative branch boards and commissions are covered. Sending a FOIA request to any of these will not produce records.

One more limit applies to who can request: people incarcerated in state or local correctional facilities have no right to submit FOIA requests under Michigan law.²

Why Requests Get Denied

Michigan FOIA divides all public records into two classes: exempt and nonexempt. When a record contains both, the agency has to redact the exempt parts and release the rest. A flat refusal on a document with any nonexempt material in it violates the Act.³

The full list of exemptions lives in MCL 15.243. The ones you’re most likely to run into:

Law enforcement records where release would interfere with an investigation, deprive someone of a fair trial, identify a confidential source, expose investigative techniques, or endanger an officer.⁵
Information whose release would be a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, such as medical records or Social Security numbers.
Trade secrets and confidential commercial or financial information obtained from a person.
Communications protected by attorney-client privilege.
Records that would compromise the physical security of a jail or prison, subject to a balancing test between the public interests in disclosure and nondisclosure.⁵
Records specifically exempted from disclosure by another Michigan statute.

What to Do If You Are Denied

You have two paths, and one of them has a hard deadline.

Internal Appeal

You can appeal to the head of the public body. The appeal has to be in writing, has to use the word “appeal,” and has to explain why you think the denial was wrong.⁶ The head then has ten business days to reverse, uphold, or partially reverse the denial. Under unusual circumstances the head can extend that by up to ten more business days, once.⁷

Lawsuit

You can file a civil action in circuit court, or in the Court of Claims if a state public body denied you. You have 180 days from the public body’s final determination to file, and that deadline applies whether or not you tried an internal appeal first. Miss it and you lose the right to challenge the denial.⁶

The court reviews the denial from scratch rather than deferring to the agency. If it finds the records were wrongfully withheld, it orders them produced, and the winning requester is awarded reasonable attorney fees, costs, and disbursements.⁶

Extra Penalties for Bad-Faith Denials

If the court finds the public body arbitrarily and capriciously violated the Act by refusing or delaying disclosure, it must impose two additional consequences on top of any actual damages: a $1,000 civil fine paid into the state treasury, and $1,000 in punitive damages paid to you.⁷

1
Michigan Legislature. MCL – Section 15.235 – Freedom of Information Act (Excerpt)
2
Michigan Legislature. MCL – Section 15.231 – Freedom of Information Act (Excerpt)
3
Michigan Legislature. MCL – Section 15.234 – Freedom of Information Act (Excerpt)
4
Michigan Legislature. MCL – Section 15.232 – Freedom of Information Act (Excerpt)
5
Michigan Legislature. MCL – Section 15.243 – Freedom of Information Act (Excerpt)
6
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 15.231 et seq. – Freedom of Information Act
7
Michigan Legislature. MCL – Section 15.240 – Freedom of Information Act (Excerpt)