Delaware's Freedom of Information Act — codified at 29 Del. C. ch. 100 — gives any Delaware citizen the right to inspect and copy public records held by state agencies, the General Assembly, county and municipal governments, school districts, and most public bodies. Agencies have 15 business days to respond and must justify any withholding under one of the law's specific exemptions.
Records released this way are public — but in practice they often sit on one requester's laptop, in a forgotten Dropbox folder, or buried in a single news story. Their public-ness expires the moment they stop being findable.
The Delaware FOIA Library is a free, public repository for those records. It exists so documents released by Delaware state and municipal agencies — at considerable effort — don't quietly disappear.
Records from any Delaware public body subject to the state's FOIA, including:
Anyone can submit a document. Submissions are reviewed by a moderator to confirm they're authentic releases under Delaware's FOIA and that the linked file is publicly accessible. Once approved, the entry is added and becomes searchable.
Who can file: Delaware's FOIA limits requesters to "citizens of the state" — broader than residents but narrower than the federal FOIA's "any person." In practice many advocacy groups and news organizations file through a Delaware affiliate or member.
Deadlines: Agencies must respond within 15 business days. They can extend if the request is "unusual" or voluminous, but must say so in writing.
Fees: Agencies can charge for staff time and copying, but the first hour of search is free and the fee schedule is regulated.
Appeals: Denials can be appealed to the Delaware Attorney General's office, which issues binding determinations. Past AG determinations are themselves public — useful precedent when arguing a denied request.
This is general information, not legal advice. For questions about a specific request or denial, consult the resources below or a lawyer.
It is not a place to leak documents that were not officially released. It is not a place for documents whose authenticity can't be verified. And it is not a substitute for the document hosts themselves — DocumentCloud, the Internet Archive, and similar services handle OCR, preservation, and viewing. This site is a cat