FOIA Fee Waiver Denied — Paid Consultation on Fees and Requester Category
A paid consultation with Sherrod Seward, Esq. on a refused waiver, a fee estimate you cannot pay, and the requester category the agency put you in.
A fee decision can end a request as effectively as a denial, and it is separately appealable. There are really two arguments here and they are decided on different tests: whether fees should be waived or reduced because disclosure is in the public interest, and which requester category you belong to, which decides what the agency may charge you for at all. You will leave the call knowing which of the two your letter actually decided, what an appeal would have to establish, and whether narrowing the request is the cheaper answer.
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Request the consultation
Six fields. About a minute.
Bring the call one of these
- Your fee waiver request was refused and you want to appeal it.
- The agency put you in the commercial category and you are not a commercial requester.
- The estimate is far beyond what the records are worth to you.
- You have been asked for payment in advance, before any search happens.
- You want the request rewritten so that it costs less without losing what you need.
Two different tests, answered by agencies in one paragraph
The public-interest waiver turns on whether disclosure is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government, and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester. That is a test about the records and about what you will do with them, and it is carried on specifics rather than on sentiment. Category is a separate question: commercial requesters, educational and non-commercial scientific institutions and representatives of the news media, and all other requesters are chargeable for different things, and requesters who are not commercial have a free allowance of search time and duplication before anything is charged at all. There is also a rule worth knowing about: an agency that has missed the statutory time limits may lose the ability to charge search fees, subject to defined exceptions. A fee letter often disposes of all of this in a single paragraph, and separating out what was actually decided is the first work of the call.
This office has been the plaintiff, not only the drafter
Law Offices of Sherrod Seward, PLLC v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
No. 3:25-cv-00057 (W.D.N.C.), filed January 2025
This office has been the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act case, not only the drafter of the request. When an agency declined to produce records, the firm filed suit in its own name under 5 U.S.C. 552 to compel production.
A pending matter is described here as a fact about this office's own experience. It is not a result, it does not predict anything about any other case, and every case is decided on its own record. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
How it runs
- Send the enquiryThe form below. Six fields, about a minute.
- Pay the consultation fee$500, on the firm's secure payment page. Credited in full against the fee for the engagement if this office is engaged on the matter.
- The consultationThe call itself. Bring the request, the response letter and the envelope — deadlines run from what the paper says.
- A written summaryWhat was decided, what the next step is, and the date it has to happen by.
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Questions people actually ask
What do I actually get for the fee?
The $500 is the fee for the consultation itself and for the written summary that follows it. It is not a retainer, and it does not include drafting or filing a FOIA request, an administrative appeal, a licence application, a delisting petition, a federal court complaint, a trademark application, a response to a USPTO office action, or a post-registration maintenance filing - each of those is separately scoped and separately quoted. Government, agency and court filing fees, any agency search, review or duplication fees, and any USPTO filing fees, are not included and are payable to the government, not to this office. On a government contract matter it likewise does not include preparing or certifying a claim to a contracting officer, a request for equitable adjustment, a termination settlement proposal, an agency-level protest, a protest at the Government Accountability Office, an appeal to an agency board of contract appeals, or a complaint in the United States Court of Federal Claims - each of those is separately scoped and separately quoted.
Is this legal advice?
The consultation is. This page is not — it is general information about federal practice, and reading it creates no relationship with this office. Sending this form does not create an attorney-client relationship. No attorney-client relationship is formed until this office and you have signed a written engagement agreement.
Can you tell me what my chances are?
You will get a candid assessment of what your record supports and where it is thin, which is the useful version of that question. What you will not get is a percentage. Every matter is decided on its own record by a government officer or a judge, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
What happens if you cannot help?
You will be told so on the call, and told where the matter actually belongs. That happens often enough to be worth saying out loud.
The agency called me a commercial requester and I am not. Can that be challenged?
Yes, and it is often the more productive of the two arguments, because category turns on who you are and the use to which the records will be put rather than on a discretionary public-interest judgement. Getting the category right can reduce a fee substantially even where a full waiver is not available.
They want money up front before they will search. Is that normal?
An agency may require payment before it begins only in defined circumstances, and outside those an advance demand is itself something to question. Whether your letter falls inside them is a matter of reading the estimate and the correspondence, and it is worth doing before anything is paid, because money already sent is much harder to argue about than money not yet sent.