FDA FOIA Monitor
Why is the June issue published in July? FDA releases its monthly FOIA log several weeks after month-end. Each issue of FDA FOIA Monitor analyzes the most recent data available, this issue covers June 1 through June 30. New here? Start with the 2020–2026 Baseline Report for full historical context.
Five Things That Changed in June
- FDA closed 712 requests in June, down from May's 856.
- Median processing time ticked up to 23 days, from May's 17, though both are far faster than earlier in 2026. May was actually the fastest month of the year so far, not June.
- Release rate recovered to 74%, up 8 points from May's 66%, and withdrawals fell by three-quarters (124 → 31).
- Individual/citizen requesters became the largest filer group in June (32% of closings), overtaking both Commercial FOIA Services and Regulated Industry for the first time this year.
- A request the Minneapolis Star Tribune filed in 2015 was finally released this month. It waited 3,823 days, over ten years. Full story below.
The Month in Numbers
| Metric | June 2026 | May 2026 | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Requests Closed | 712 | 856 | −16.8% |
| Median Processing Time | 23 days | 17 days | +35% |
| Release Rate | 74.0% | 65.9% | +8.1 pts |
| Avg Processing Time | 89 days | 98 days | −9% |
| Withdrawals | 31 | 124 | −75% |
| Formal Denials | 0 | 0 | — |
We're not showing a year-over-year comparison against June 2025 here. That month's log shows 456 of its 466 closures as "Released," with zero Withdrawn, No Records, Denied, or Partial/Referred recorded, all sharing a single close date (06/30/2025), consistent with FDA batch-closing a backlog under a generic status rather than logging individual dispositions. That pattern holds in FDA's own annual report and public log, so it's a real artifact in FDA's data, making June 2025 an unreliable comparator.
Updated 7/26/26: both May's and June's numbers above were revised after FDA posted its May and June 2026 open logs, which let us correctly identify a batch of requests we'd counted as closed that were actually still pending. The original version of this issue reported June as the faster of the two months (34-day median vs. May's 55). With the correction, May turns out to have been the faster month (17 days vs. June's 23), though the release-rate and withdrawal improvements we reported still hold.
Median Processing Time, Month by Month
Bar length (in block characters) proportional to median days, scaled to February's 58.5-day high.
One takeaway: May, not June, was actually 2026's fastest month so far (17-day median). June ticked up slightly to 23 days, still the second-fastest month of the year. Both are a marked improvement over the January-to-March stretch. If July stays in the high-teens to low-twenties, that's the stronger signal FDA has genuinely picked up the pace, rather than May being a one-off.
Release Rates Improved in June. Typical Wait Times Didn't.
June is a mixed month, not a clean win. Release rate climbed 8 points to 74%, and withdrawals dropped by three-quarters (124 to 31), both genuine signs of a healthier queue. But the median processing time actually ticked up slightly, from May's 17 days to June's 23, even as the average improved (98 days to 89). When the median and the average move in different directions like this, it usually means the mix of requests changed rather than everything simply got faster or slower.
The withdrawal drop is still the most telling number here. Withdrawals are usually a symptom of backlog (requesters give up or narrow scope after long waits), so a sharp drop points to FDA working through its queue rather than requesters shedding hard cases. That's a genuinely good sign, even in a month where the typical wait ticked up.
Individual Requesters Take the Top Spot
For the first time in 2026, individual/citizen requesters (32%) outfiled both Commercial FOIA Services (25%) and Regulated Industry (25%) in a single month. In May, Regulated Industry led at 32%. It's one data point, not a structural shift, but worth tracking. A sustained move would say more about what's driving FOIA volume than any single doc-type story.
| Requester Type | June 2026 | % of Month | May 2026 % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual / Citizen | 227 | 31.9% | 25.7% |
| Commercial FOIA Service | 179 | 25.1% | 21.7% |
| Regulated Industry | 178 | 25.0% | 31.8% |
| News / Media | 58 | 8.1% | 12.7% |
| Law Firm | 44 | 6.2% | 6.1% |
| Academic / Research | 21 | 2.9% | 1.4% |
| Advocacy / NGO | 5 | 0.7% | 0.2% |
A 2015 Request, Finally Answered in 2026
Control #2015-7141 · PMA · Minneapolis Star Tribune · 3,823 days waited
Requested: Post-approval reports and studies Medtronic filed with FDA under PMA P000058, the ongoing safety and effectiveness data a device maker has to keep submitting after a device is already on the market.
Released: February 2026, over ten and a half years after the paper filed in September 2015.
Why it matters: Post-approval reports are the record of whether a device maker is actually following through on the monitoring commitments it made to get approved. A local paper covering a hometown medical device company (Medtronic is headquartered in Minnesota) chased this for over a decade, longer than some of the devices it covers have even been on the market.
Available now: Search this record in the database, or request it as a Database Request referencing control #2015-7141 for faster turnaround.
More Notable Long-Waited Records
A running list of other interesting long-delayed releases surfacing in the log recently, not limited to June closings, but all recent enough to be fresh:
Control #2019-5864 · 2,464 days · FierceMedTech
FDA issued a public safety alert in June 2019 about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in Medtronic insulin pumps. This request went after the internal emails and correspondence between FDA and Medtronic behind that alert, the trade press equivalent of asking "what did the company actually tell the agency, versus what the public alert said." Took nearly seven years to get an answer.
Control #2020-6256 · 2,068 days · Environmental Working Group
EWG requested all FDA correspondence with cosmetics manufacturers, health officials, and lawmakers about formaldehyde in keratin hair-straightening products, spanning 2017 to present. This sits squarely in the ongoing chemical hair-straightener litigation and advocacy fight, where EWG has been one of the most vocal groups pushing for regulation. Five and a half years for an answer.
Control #2025-3217 · 417 days · The Capitol Forum
Nyxoah, a medtech company, told investors in March 2025 that it had received an approvable letter from FDA for its Genio sleep apnea implant. The Capitol Forum, which serves institutional investors, wasn't looking for new information here, it was going after FDA's actual letter to check what the agency said against what the company summarized in its own investor disclosure.
Full documents available through FOIA Pro or as a Database Request.
483s Are Still FDA FOIA's Biggest Category. Their Grip Is Loosening.
Form 483 inspection observation requests remain the single largest doc type in the dataset by a wide margin: 17,317 requests all-time, about a quarter of every FOIA request FDA has closed since 2015. They're also one of the fastest tracks, with an 18-day median all-time, though that's climbed to 22 days in 2026 (up 38% from 2024's 16-day median).
June's 289 483 requests were still the largest single category (41% of the month), but that share has eased two months running: 46% in May, 41% in June. Whether that's noise or the start of a mix shift toward other doc types is worth watching over July and August.