Reading Room Document

Applicability of the Federal Advisory Committee Act to the National Endowment for the Humanities

The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) requires that the names of members of the Humanities Panel of the National E ndowment for the Humanities (NEH) be made available to the public by subgroup, but does not require that such disclosure occur until after the particular subgroup's work has been completed. The privacy exemption to the open meeting requirement of the Government in the Sunshine Act, made applicable to federal advisory committees by the 1976 amendments to FACA, may permit closing some portions of meetings of subgroups of the Humanities Panel at which individual grant applications are discussed; however, the NEH has the responsibility to determine in advance what portions of subgroup meetings will not fall within an exemption to FACA's openness requirement, and to assure that those portions are closed to the public. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/file/24581/download.

August 18, 1980