Court of Common Pleas of Lackawanna County v. Office of Open Records
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 35, M.D. 2010
August 11, 2010
The Commonwealth Court held that emails sent to and from a court employee were not subject to disclosure under the Right to Know Law because the Law provides that only financial records of judicial agencies are accessible to the public, even if the records are stored on computers owned by the county and not the court.
Background
Two people submitted Right to Know Law requests to Lackawanna County seeking emails sent to or from an individual working as the director of a county’s Office of Domestic Relations.
After one of the requesters appealed to the OOR, the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts filed a complaint with the Commonwealth Court seeking a ruling that the county could not turn over the emails because they are judicial records.
Commonwealth Court Decision
The RTKL defines a judicial agency as “a court of the Commonwealth or any other office or entity of the unified judicial system” and provides that the only records of a judicial agency subject to disclosure are financial records.
State law mandates that each county court should have a domestic relations department. Thus, the court ruled, the director of Lackawanna County Office of Domestic Relations was an employee of the judiciary, and his emails were not public records.
The court noted that it did not matter that the employee’s salary was paid by the county or that his emails were stored on the county’s computer system. The court explained that the fact that counties provides logistic support to local courts does not transform judicial records into records of the county accessible under the RTKL.
Accordingly the court held that the director’s emails should not be released.