North Dakota Open Records Law: Requests and AG Opinions (2026)

North Dakota's open records law, N.D. Cent. Code Chapter 44-04, sets no numeric response deadline. What it gives instead is an enforcement mechanism most states lack: a free Attorney General opinion, available within thirty days of the violation, that a public entity must act on within seven days.

What North Dakota's open records law covers

Chapter 44-04 addresses duties, records, and meetings together, and the open records provision is section 44-04-18. It applies to public entities across the state: state agencies, counties, cities, school districts, park districts, and their subordinate bodies.

The presumption in North Dakota is constitutional as well as statutory. Article XI, section 6 of the state constitution provides that all records of public entities are public unless otherwise provided by law, which means an exemption has to come from somewhere specific.

Exemptions and exempt records are spread across Chapter 44-04 rather than gathered in one block. The definitions and general provisions sit in sections 44-04-17.1 through 44-04-19.2, the numbered exemption series runs through section 44-04-18.34, and further exemptions appear later in the chapter. They include confidential criminal intelligence and investigative information, certain personnel and medical information, the categories in section 44-04-18.7 discussed below, and security system plans together with disaster and cybersecurity records, which are exempted by section 44-04-24 rather than by the 44-04-18 series.

Who can request, and what an agency may ask you

Any person. And North Dakota is unusually explicit about the questions an entity may not ask.

Section 44-04-18 provides that a public entity "may require written clarification of the request to determine what records are being requested, but may not ask for the motive or reason for requesting the records or for the identity of the person requesting public records."

That is a broader protection than most states offer, because it covers identity as well as motive. You can request North Dakota records without giving your name, and an entity that conditions production on knowing who you are has misread the statute.

Requests do not have to be in person or in writing, and if you ask for copies to be mailed, the entity must mail them.

The deadline that is not a deadline

North Dakota sets no day count. The operative language is a violation standard: section 44-04-18 "is violated when a person's right to review or receive a copy of a record that is not exempt or confidential is denied or unreasonably delayed or when a fee is charged in excess of the amount authorized."

Reasonableness depends on the request. A single document that a clerk can print should come back in days; a request spanning years of email across several offices reasonably takes longer. What makes the standard workable in North Dakota is that you do not have to litigate to test it. The Attorney General will tell you, for free, whether the delay was unreasonable.

Practical approach: make the request, ask for an estimated completion date, follow up in writing at a sensible interval, and if the entity goes quiet or the delay becomes indefensible, request an opinion. The thirty-day window for that request, described below, means you should not let a stalled request drift for months.

What North Dakota can charge

Section 44-04-18 sets specific ceilings, which is unusual in a state with no deadline:

• Paper copies: up to 25 cents per page for a copy up to 8.5 by 14 inches.
• Other formats: actual reasonable cost, including materials, labor, and equipment.
• Postage: actual cost may be charged.
• Locating records: up to $25 per hour per request, excluding the initial hour, where locating the records takes more than one hour.
• Excising confidential or closed material: up to $25 per hour per request, again excluding the initial hour.
• Electronic copies: free, other than the costs allowed in subsection 2, which is the subsection carrying the locating and excising hourly charges and the actual-cost rule for non-paper formats. So "free" means no separate charge for the electronic copy itself, not that a large electronic request arrives with no bill at all.

The free-first-hour structure repeats for both locating and excising, so a modest request typically carries no labor charge at all. There is no indigency or public-interest waiver in the statute as of August 2026; the caps and the free hours are the cost control.

One anti-splitting provision shapes how those free hours work, and it is an option rather than an operation of law. Section 44-04-18(2) provides that if a public entity receives five or more requests from the same requester within seven days, the entity may treat the requests as one request in computing the time it takes to locate and excise the records. Because the entity may exercise it, breaking a large ask into a series of small ones cannot be relied on to multiply the free initial hour.

Charging more than the authorized amounts is itself a violation of section 44-04-18, which means an excessive fee is something the Attorney General can rule on.

How to file

Send the request to the public entity that holds the records. North Dakota has no central portal, and requests go to the city auditor, county auditor, school district business manager, or the agency's records contact.

Although the statute does not require writing, write it anyway. If you later ask the Attorney General for an opinion, you will need to show what you requested and when, and a civil action under section 44-04-21.2 requires the complaint to attach the dated written records request.

Describe the records so a clerk can find them, state whether you want to inspect or receive copies, note whether you want them mailed or emailed, and ask for an estimated completion date and cost. You do not have to give a reason, and you are not required to identify yourself, though a return address is obviously necessary if you want copies mailed. Our records request generator will assemble a North Dakota request, and our guide to filing a records request covers the federal FOIA process.

If North Dakota denies or stalls your request

North Dakota's enforcement design is the state's best feature for an ordinary requester, and the two paths can be combined.

Start by making the entity commit to a reason. Section 44-04-18(7) requires a public entity that denies a request to describe the legal authority for the denial, and to put that description in writing if the requester asks. Ask in writing, and you convert a vague refusal into a citation you can hand to the Attorney General.

The Attorney General opinion, section 44-04-21.1. Any interested person may ask the Attorney General to review an alleged violation. The request must be made within thirty days of the alleged violation, or ninety days for a meeting-notice violation. The Attorney General reviews and issues an opinion. If the opinion finds a violation, the public entity has seven days to correct it.

This costs nothing, requires no lawyer, and produces a published written opinion. The Attorney General maintains a searchable archive of past open records and open meetings opinions, which is also a useful research tool: if your question has come up before, the answer may already exist in an opinion you can cite in your request letter.

Watch the thirty-day clock. It is short, and it runs from the alleged violation, so a request that has been ignored for months may need you to treat a specific date, such as a written refusal or an unanswered follow-up, as the violation date.

Civil action, section 44-04-21.2. A violation may separately support a civil action, and the timing rules are tight enough to plan around from day one.

• A sixty-day limitations period. Section 44-04-21.2(1) requires the action to be brought within sixty days of the date the person knew or should have known of the violation, or within thirty days of issuance of an Attorney General opinion on the violation, whichever is later. That is short. A stalled request left to drift can time out before you decide to act, and the later-of structure is another reason to request an opinion early: it resets a fresh thirty days from the date the opinion issues.
• Venue. The action is brought in the district court of the county where the public entity has its principal office, or in Burleigh County if the entity has no principal office in the state.
• The complaint. It must attach the dated written records request.
• Relief. A prevailing party may obtain declaratory relief, an injunction, and a writ of mandamus. Costs, disbursements, and reasonable attorney fees are available, and an intentional or knowing violation can additionally draw damages of $1,000 or actual damages, whichever is greater.

The three-working-days notice requirement is narrower than it is usually described. Under section 44-04-21.2(3) it applies only to an action seeking attorney fees or damages, or both, and it is excused where the Attorney General has already issued an opinion finding a violation by that entity. If you are only seeking an order compelling release, the notice step is not in your way.

Section 44-04-21.1(2) supplies a related lever worth knowing. If the Attorney General issues an opinion finding a violation and the public entity neither complies nor takes the required corrective action within seven days, and the entity then loses a civil action over the same violation, the court is directed to award the plaintiff costs, disbursements, and reasonable attorney fees. Ignoring an adverse opinion converts a discretionary fee question into a mandatory one.

Body-camera video and police records

North Dakota did not build a separate access statute for police video the way North Carolina did. It handled the question with an exemption, and the exemption is narrower than requesters often assume.

Section 44-04-18.7(9) provides that an image taken with a body camera or similar device and taken in a private place is an exempt record. The limiting phrase is "in a private place." Footage recorded on a public street, in a parking lot, or in another public location is not exempt under that provision, which makes North Dakota comparatively open on the most commonly requested category of police video.

The same section separately exempts crime scene images of homicide and sex crime victims, and images of minor victims.

Other exemptions still apply. Active criminal investigative information is confidential under Chapter 44-04's criminal intelligence provisions, so an open investigation remains the most likely basis for a refusal, and "the video was recorded in public" does not by itself defeat an investigative exemption.

Because "exempt" in North Dakota generally means the entity may withhold rather than must withhold, it is worth asking the agency to release anyway, and worth asking for redaction rather than accepting a categorical no. If the entity refuses, the Attorney General opinion route is available on that question like any other. For dispatch audio, see our guide to 911 calls and public records, which notes that North Dakota is among the states that release transcripts more readily than audio.

What Chapter 44-04 does not cover

North Dakota birth and death certificates are vital records administered by the Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Vital Records, with certified copies limited to people who can show a direct and tangible interest. An open records request is not the route; see our North Dakota death records guide.

Court records are governed by the North Dakota Supreme Court's administrative rules on access to court records rather than by Chapter 44-04.

The fee caps, enforcement routes, and exemptions above reflect N.D. Cent. Code Chapter 44-04 as published by the North Dakota Legislative Branch and reviewed in August 2026. Public entities set their own contacts and procedures. This article is general legal information, not legal advice.

For a side-by-side comparison of every state's deadline, fees, and appeal route, see our public records laws by state hub.