The Legal Landscape: What Every US Government Communicator Needs to Know

It arrives late on a Thursday. A reporter you've worked with for years has filed a public records request for every email and text message sent between the chief, the city manager and the communications office in the 48 hours after last month's use-of-force incident. Your name is on it. So are the drafts of the statement you wrote, the three versions leadership rejected, and a text you sent to a colleague at 11pm that you'd rather not see in print.

This is the moment most communicators discover that open records law isn't somebody else's job. You are a records custodian, a records creator, and very often the person who has to explain the release when it lands. You might also be the person who feels most tempted to slow it down, and that's the temptation this lesson is designed to talk you out of.

Open records laws exist to let the public see how government works. That's uncomfortable for the people inside government, and it's meant to be. The good news is that an organization that understands these laws, meets its deadlines and publishes routinely requested material without being asked tends to find records requests far less frightening, because there's less in the pile that nobody has seen before.

This lesson covers how federal FOIA works, why your state's law is almost certainly the one that governs you, what counts as a record (including on your own phone), and where communications belongs in the response process.

A note before we start: this course explains the legal landscape so you can spot issues early and ask better questions. It is not legal advice, and it can't replace your organization's attorney. The law also varies by state and changes often. Everything here was checked against primary or authoritative sources as of September 2026; when a real decision is in front of you, confirm the current position with counsel.