President Obama has signed into law S. 337, the “FOIA Improvement Act of 2016,” a rare bipartisan bill approved by Congress that amends the Freedom of Information Act to establish a statutory presumption of openness. Under the bill, federal agencies are allowed to withhold information only if disclosure is prohibited by law or if “the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by” one of FOIA’s nine exemptions.
FOIA sets out rules under which the public can obtain information from the government. The moving force behind enactment of S. 337 was a concern on the part of Congress that federal agencies were increasingly withholding information from the public by invoking one of FOIA’s nine statutory exemptions.
It is unclear at this point as to how, or even whether, the FOIA Improvement Act will impact public disclosure of the sensitive EEO data and other confidential business information companies routinely have to submit to federal agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).
A copy of S. 337 as signed into law is available here.
Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.