Easton Area School District v. Baxter
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 976 C.D. 2011
January 24, 2012
The Commonwealth Court held that the Right to Know Law (“RTKL”) requires agencies to provide access to emails to or from government employees when those employees are acting in their official capacities. Agencies, however, can withhold emails that concern employees’ private activities.
Background
Christopher Baxter, a reporter for the Allentown Morning Call, made a request under the RTKL for all emails from October 2010 that were sent by and received from the email addresses of 11 members of the Easton Area School District school board.
The school district denied the request, claiming that it was insufficiently specific and that the records were protected by federal or state law, subject to the internal predecisional deliberations exemption, and contained personally identifiable information.
Baxter appealed to the OOR, which ruled that the request was sufficiently specific and that the school district failed to meet its burden of proving that the records were exempt from disclosure. Thus, the OOR ordered the disclosure of the emails with redactions made for “personally identifiable information.”
The trial court upheld the determination, and the school district then appealed to the Commonwealth Court.
Commonwealth Court Decision
The Commonwealth Court explained that emails are not necessarily public records simply because they are sent to or from a government email address or are saved on a government owned computer. Rather, emails are public records if they “document a transaction or activity of an agency.”
The court explained that an individual “acting in his or her official capacity . . . constitutes agency activity when discussing agency business.” Thus, emails containing discussions of agency business are public records.
Although some of the requested emails might be classified as internal predecisional deliberations, the school district did not raise this issue on appeal, and consequently the court did not consider the legitimacy of that basis for denying the request.
The court ruled that the request was sufficiently specific because it was “limited in terms of the type of record requested, the timeframe, and the number of email addresses.” In addition, the court noted that the school district was able to find and identify specific records that were responsive to the request.
Consistent with these rulings, the court required the school district to release all responsive records related to a transaction or activity of the school dDistrict, but allowed it to withhold any emails concerning “private activities.”
▪ January 24, 2012 – Commonwealth Court Opinion – No. 976 C.D. 2011