The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania permitted the Pennsylvania State Education Association to proceed with a lawsuit against the Office of Open Records. 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.
The Commonwealth Court ruled that the Office of Open Records (“OOR”) does not have jurisdiction under the Right to Know Law to compel the disclosure of records in the city solicitor’s office related to a pending litigation. To allow the OOR such jurisdiction would infringe upon the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s sole jurisdiction over the practice of law in the state.
The Commonwealth Court held that a request for county emails was insufficiently specific because it did not provide a specific timeframe, identify individual senders or recipients, or specify county departments that might have the requested email.
The court explained that the request was overly broad even though it sought emails to and from five domains and identified key terms in the emails, as the terms were too broad and did not provide any context with which to limit the county’s search for responsive records.
The Commonwealth Court ruled that records of grievances filed under a labor-management agreement between the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority and various unions are not exempt from disclosure under the Right to Know Law’s exceptions for records related to agency employee grievance materials and non-criminal investigations.
The Commonwealth Court ruled that a request for records under the Right to Know Law (“RTKL”) is sufficiently specific if it requests a “clearly-defined universe of documents,” regardless of how many documents that universe may contain. The court also ruled that any agency receiving a request for records under the RTKL must undertake a physical search for the requested records.
The Commonwealth Court ruled that the calendars of the mayor of Philadelphia and city council members were exempt from disclosure under the “working papers” exemption of the Right to Know Law.
The Commonwealth Court ruled that a judge’s decision in a federal case to not compel disclosure of records in civil discovery did not prevent an attorney from obtaining those same records through a Right to Know Law request.
The Commonwealth Court ruled that in denying a request for records, an agency can simply cite exemptions to disclosure of the Right to Know Law without explaining how they apply to the request. Because the requester in this case did not state why the requested records were public records and did not address the various asserted exemptions, he could not meet his burden to gain access to the requested records.
The Commonwealth Court decided that the character of a record — either a public document or a record exempt from the Right to Know Law — does not change simply because an agency previously released some of the requested information to a third party.
The Commonwealth Court decided that, within reason, any written request for records to an agency employee suffices for a Right to Know Law request. As a result, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board was wrong to ignore the requester’s e-mail simply because he did not specifically reference the RTKL or use a specific form.