State Supreme Court Says California Officials Can No Longer Hide Documents In Personal Email Accounts And Devices
Public servants discussing public business. Should be public records, right? California politicians don’t think so. The city of San Jose has spent eight years litigating the issue, hoping for the state’s courts to find it permissible for public officials to hide official communications in personal email accounts and personal devices.
In 2009, activist Ted Smith requested records from the city of San Jose, triggering a long-running lawsuit which has only now reached its conclusion. A state appeals court previously ruled for the city, finding records stored in personal accounts/devices to be beyond the reach of the state’s public records laws.
Fortunately, as the EFF reports, the state’s supreme court has overturned that decision, making it much more difficult for public officials to stay out of the public eye. The decision [PDF] deals with the many arguments the city made — several of which attempted to rewrite public records laws on the fly by taking certain phrases out of their context — but the bottom line is this: public records still belong to the public, no matter where they’re stored.