FOIA requesters must exhaust administrative remedies before filing FOIA suits.
A requester “shall be deemed to have exhausted his administrative remedies ... if the agency fails to comply with the applicable time limit provisions.” If the agency responds to an initial request after the 20 working days permitted for a response to the request, but prior to the filing of a lawsuit, the requester is then obligated to pursue an administrative appeal prior to initiating litigation. Even if an agency fails to meet the time limits and the requester brings suit, courts may stay the litigation, retain jurisdiction and allow the agency additional time to process the request if the agency can show that “exceptional circumstances exist and the agency is exercising due diligence in responding to the request.” Exceptional circumstances exist only where the agency “is deluged with a volume of requests for information vastly in excess of that anticipated by Congress” and “the existing resources are inadequate to deal with the volume of such requests within the time limits” of the Act.