Alabama
Alabama Open Records Act
Ala. Code § 36-12-40 et seq.
Public records law for Alabama. Covers state agencies, counties, municipalities, school districts, and special districts.
The clock
No fixed deadline — “reasonable time”
Reasonable time; no fixed deadline. AG opinions say prompt.
No fixed deadline. Aletheca does not run a countdown against this statute and does not record a constructive denial on elapsed time alone — a breach here has to be argued from the facts of the request, not asserted from a number.
Statutory: Reasonable time; no fixed deadline. AG opinions say prompt.. Actual medians vary widely by agency and request complexity; simple requests often 7-30 days, complex 60-300+.
Reading the statute itself
The text of this one is not reproduced here. The United States Code carries no copyright, so federal FOIA is printed on this site in full; the fifty state codes are published by fifty legislatures under their own claims of compilation copyright, so they are linked instead. Everything on this page — the deadline, the appeal path, the fee-waiver standard — is Aletheca’s summary of that text, and the official source is one click away.
If they refuse
- Appeal deadline
- Not specified
- Appeal route
- No administrative appeal; mandamus or declaratory judgment in circuit court.
- Litigation
- Not specified
Fees and expedition
Quirks worth knowing
Broad but vague; no statutory deadline — negotiate reasonable time, then sue.