Home address case sent back to Commonwealth Court

Published on

Pennsylvania State Education Association v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
No. 59 MAP 2010
August 21, 2012

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania permitted the Pennsylvania State Education Association (“PSEA”) to proceed with a lawsuit against the Office of Open Records (“OOR”). In the suit, the PSEA seeks to block the OOR from ordering the disclosure of home addresses for teachers and other public education employees under the Right to Know Law (“RTKL”).

Background

The RTKL provides that the home addresses of certain individuals — law enforcement officials, judges, and minors — are not publicly available. In light of a series of decisions in which OOR allowed access to records with other people’s home addresses to be released, PSEA filed suit in the Commonwealth Court seeking an injunction to block the release of its members addresses and asking the court to declare that school employees’ address information is not accessible under the Law.

Soon after the suit was filed, the Commonwealth Court entered a preliminary injunction in which it ordered that agencies could not release the public school employees’ home addresses while the case was proceeding. That order was affirmed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Later, as the litigation continued in front of the Commonwealth Court, the court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the case because the OOR was a quasi-judicial tribunal, not a commonwealth agency. The court then dissolved the injunction.

PSEA appealed the Commonwealth Court’s decision to the Supreme Court, which reissued the injunction as it considered whether the Commonwealth Court had jurisdiction over the case.

Supreme Court decision

The Supreme Court vacated the Commonwealth Court’s decision, ruling that the court had jurisdiction to consider the PSEA’s lawsuit.

First, the Supreme Court noted that public school employees “have (at the very least) a colorable interest in the grant or denial of RTKL requests for their personal address information.” Yet, the Court continued, “the RTKL does not make them parties to the request or the ensuing appeal process. Indeed, affected school employees are not so much as afforded required notice of requests and/or proceedings before the OOR.”

Under these circumstances, according to the Supreme Court, the RTKL “does not provide public school employees with a reliable administrative or judicial method by which to seek redress for action that they believe violates the statutory scheme and/or their constitutional rights.”

Without a procedural mechanism under the RTKL, “it is unclear how [school employees] would be able to obtain timely, meaningful judicial review of the issue.”

As a result, the Supreme Court stated, “in these unique circumstances, we have no difficulty in concluding it is just and proper for the OOR to be haled into court to address core and colorable issues related with such treatment at the behest of affected and their associations.”

The Supreme Court then sent the case back to the Commonwealth Court to make a ruling on the merits of the PSEA’s lawsuit. The injunction blocking access to public school employees’ home addresses remains in place.