Let’s suppose that you are a member of the local school board.  You have an email address that the district has provided for you, and you are encouraged to use that account for all school-related business.  Of course you also have your personal email address.  Sometimes you use your personal account for school business. It’s just more convenient sometimes. Or perhaps you are communicating with a voter in the district who happens to have your personal email address.

Then someone files a PIA (Public Information Act) request for all school-related emails, whether on the district account or your personal account. Your lawyer has advised you that the content of your emails is “public information” and will have to be disclosed, regardless of what device or what account you used. But what about your email address? Doesn’t the PIA specifically say that an individual’s personal email address is confidential and can be redacted?

That was the issue in the recently decided case of The Austin Bulldog v. Leffingwell.  The Court of Appeals in Austin noted that the PIA does allow redaction of personal email addresses of “a member of the public.”  When the Austin Bulldog obtained email correspondence among the Austin mayor and city council members, the private email addresses of the city officials were redacted. The Bulldog went after those addresses (what…..you would expect the BULLDOG to back off?  No way!).  The Attorney General backed the city on this one. The AG construed the phrase “a member of the public” to be just as broad as it sounds. Read literally, “a member of the public” certainly would include the mayor and all of the council members.

But the city was dealing with The Bulldog! So the matter went on to court. The specific language in the PIA at issue was Section 552.137(a):

Except as otherwise provided by this section, an e-mail address of a member of the public that is provided for the purpose of communicating electronically with a governmental body is confidential and not subject to disclosure under this chapter.

It’s pretty obvious what the purpose of that section is.  Joe Q. Public sends an email to his elected representative.  Joe should not have to sacrifice his privacy for the privilege of communicating with a governmental official. So his address is confidential since he is “a member of the public.”

As the Third Court points out in its opinion, the term “a member of the public” is used to distinguish Joe from the elected representative that he is communicating with.  Thus the key holding of this case:

Accordingly, we hold that “member of the public” in PIA section 552.137 does not include a person who is part of the governmental body that was “communicat[ed] with” by email.

School board members sometimes say “I didn’t do that as a board member.  I took off my board hat and put on my private citizen hat.”  That can happen sometimes.  For example, suppose a school board member sends an email to Governor Abbott asking him to grant a stay of execution to someone on death row.  This has nothing to do with school business.  In that case, the board member is “a member of the public.”  But when someone files a PIA request for emails that address the business of the school district, the personal email address of the board member cannot be redacted.

The Bulldog case was decided by the Third Court of Appeals, Austin, April 8, 2016; Docket No. 03-13-00604-CV.

DAWG BONE: SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER’S PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS MIGHT BE DISCLOSABLE UNDER PIA.

 

TOMORROW: WHAT SHOULD WE DO IF THE BUS ROUTE TAKES US PAST THE HOME OF OUR LOCAL NUDIST????