Philadelphia Public School Notebook v. School District of Philadelphia
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 640 C.D. 2011
April 26, 2012
The Commonwealth Court ruled that resolutions discussed at an agency’s public planning meeting are not considered drafts, do not reflect internal predecisional deliberations, and therefore must be disclosed under the Right to Know Law (“RTKL”).
Background
The Philadelphia Public School Notebook (“Notebook”) is a non-profit news service that reports on the Philadelphia School District (“district”) and the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (“SRC”). At one of the SRC’s monthly planning meetings, which are open to the public, the SRC discussed resolutions that would be voted on at a later date.
The Notebook requested copies of the resolutions from the district.
Initially, the district told the Notebook that it needed additional time to respond to the request. Then, after the SRC voted on the resolutions at a subsequent meeting, the district denied the request, stating that the requested resolutions were exempt from disclosure because they were drafts and were considered internal predecisional deliberations.
Nevertheless, because the resolutions had been approved at the second SRC meeting, the district provided the Notebook with copies of them.
The Notebook appealed to the Office of Open Records (“OOR”), which dismissed the appeal as moot because the Notebook already received the requested records.
On appeal, the trial court reversed the OOR’s final determination, ruling that the issue was not moot and that the records were not exempt under either of the stated exceptions.
The district then appealed to the Commonwealth Court.
Commonwealth Court Decision
Although the Notebook had obtained the requested records, the court held that the case was not moot because denials of RTKL requests like the one by the district might be repeated, but would likely evade review by the courts.
As the court explained, because the SRC planning and voting meetings occur usually one to two weeks apart, any denial of a request for materials distributed at the planning meeting could be rendered moot if the records were disclosed after the voting meeting. Under those circumstances, requesters simply would not have an ability to prevent agencies from improperly denying requests initially and could not appeal the denial of their requests in time to remedy the agency’s wrongful denials.
On the merits of the appeal, the court decided that the records were not “drafts.”
The court reasoned that because the “district itself placed the resolutions onto the SRC’s meeting agenda for discussion and consideration at a public meeting … it would be an absurd and unreasonable result if the resolutions remained exempt from disclosure under the guise of being preliminary ‘drafts.’” (Emphasis in original.)
The court ruled that once resolutions were placed on the agenda of the SRC’s meeting – where they would be discussed publicly – they no longer could be considered drafts.
The court also ruled that the records did not fall within the internal predecisional deliberations exception.
As the court noted, the resolutions “were no longer internal deliberations once they were presented to the SRC for public consideration and comment at its public planning meeting.” (Emphasis in original).
Consequently, the court concluded that the resolutions were public records that should have been disclosed initially in response to the Notebook’s request.
▪ April 26, 2012 — Commonwealth Court Opinion — No. 640 C.D. 2011