Pennsylvania appellate court rules school district must provide school board, individual member, and the superintendent’s emails to newspaper
Easton Area Sch. Dist. v. The Express Times, No. 2042 C.D. 2011 (Pa. Commw. Ct. Apr. 30, 2012)
Abstract: In a 2-1 split, a three-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has ruled that a school district must disclose all emails to and from its school board, the individual members, and the superintendent from a certain time period to a newspaper under the state’s Right-To-Know Law (RTKL). The panel majority found that the requested emails constitute public records, and the district did not raise all available objections to access when the request was made.
Facts/Issues: The Express Times (ET) submitted a records request to the Easton Area School District (EASD) for copies of all emails sent and received between October 1, 2010, and October 31, 2010, for the email addresses of nine school board members, the school board’s general email, and the district superintendent. The request was made pursuant to the RTKL. EASD denied the request citing multiple exemptions under the RTKL, including, but not limited to, “[t]he information does not meet the definition of a public record;” “The record requested is protected by privilege …;” “The record requested is protected by Federal or State law or regulation or judicial decree;” and ”Insufficiently specific.”
The ET appealed the denial to the Office of Open Records (OOR). The OOR held that EASD failed establish that all the emails requested were exempt as previously asserted, but instead only found that some emails were protected by a few exemptions. The OOR also found that because EASD “failed to identify responsive records to correlate the exceptions to the emails at issue by describing the records at issue and showing how the exception applies,” these exceptions did not apply.
However, the OOR found that EASD had shown that some of the information was protected under the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). As a result, the OOR granted ET’s appeal in part and denied it in part. EASD was ordered to disclose the responsive emails to ET that were not expressly exempt under FERPA and the exceptions enumerated in the identified sections of the RTKL. The trial court affirmed the OOR’s decision, and this appeal followed.
Ruling/Rationale: In a 2-1 vote, a three-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the trial court’s decision. The panel’s majority rejected EASD’s arguments that (1) the request was not sufficiently specific under Section 703 of the RTKL; (2) the emails in question are not public records; and (3) in the event the request is deemed sufficiently specific, the School District should be granted an opportunity to review the records and assert all applicable exemptions under the RTKL.
The panel’s majority pointed out that it had resolved the “first two issues in Easton Area School District v. Baxter, 35 A.3d 1259 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2011),” which involved a request from another newspaper for the same emails. In Baxter, the court held that the request was sufficiently specific and the emails requested were public records.
The majority then turned to the issue of whether EASD should be afforded an opportunity to assert applicable exemptions, which EASD claimed it was doing for the first time at this stage. It rejected the school district’s argument that it was seeking to assert these exemptions for the first time because the request for documents was not specific. However, the panel majority reasoned that because EASD had asserted these exemptions in its initial denial letter, it was clear that the school district viewed these exemptions as “reasonably discerned when the request was made.” Thus, the majority concluded that because EASD was able to discern what the appropriate exemptions were and failed to raise the objections to either the OOR or the trial court, the panel would reject “what is essentially a second opportunity to litigate claims that both the OOR and the trial court have already denied.”
Easton Area Sch. Dist. v. The Express Times, No. 2042 C.D. 2011 (Pa. Commw. Ct. Apr. 30, 2012)
[Editor's Note: In August 2011, Legal Clips summarized an article in the Del Mar Times, reporting that Michael Robertson had filed a lawsuit against the Del Mar Union School District (DMUSD), alleging DMUSD withheld documents subject to public disclosure under the California Public Records Act (CPRA). The suit also named DMUSD school board president Comischell Rodriguez as a defendant for failure to disclose emails related to the CPRA request that were sent to and from Rodriguez’s personal email accounts. The suit stated “Unless Petitioner is allowed access to the information he seeks, the public will be denied information prepared at public expense by public officials pertaining to the conduct of the public’s business, access to which is essential to scrutinize government.”]
