News

A Virginia woman being sued by her home contractor for libel won't have to remove negative comments she posted on Internet review sites about him, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled. The state’s high court reversed a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge’s ruling ordering Jane Perez to delete portions of her review of the contractor on Yelp and Angie’s List. In her review, Perez mentioned that her jewelry was missing. She also referenced the outcome of a suit brought by the contractor against Perez for nonpayment.

The Florida attorney general has dropped its efforts to compel a reporter’s testimony in the ongoing case against a former aide to the state’s lieutenant governor. Attorney General Pam Bondi withdrew an appeal Wednesday of a trial judge’s November order, which said that Florida Times-Union reporter Matt Dixon could not be compelled to testify in the state’s case against Carletha Cole. According to court documents, the state was “voluntarily dismissing” its appeal. The Jacksonville newspaper had planned to fight the appeal.

A Tennessee court has ruled that a private nonprofit athletic association is the equivalent of a government agency, making it subject to public records laws. The (Nashville) City Paper filed a petition in the Chancery Court for Davidson County seeking access to information from the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, which had previously denied the newspaper’s request, arguing that it is not a public government entity.

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a lower court’s decision that the open meetings provisions of the state’s Freedom of Information Act is unconstitutional, stating that questions about how the law applies to changes in technology and other concerns should be taken to the legislature, not the court. But the Supreme Court also upheld the circuit court’s ruling that local government officials did not violate the Act when an administrator met with city board members in a series of one-on-one meetings.

More than 60 percent of federal agencies have not responded to calls by Congress or President Barack Obama to update their Freedom of Information Act regulations, according to a National Security Archive report released today.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Friday unanimously approved a “very overdue” bill that would require law enforcement officials to get a warrant before accessing e-mail messages, updating a dated privacy law. The proposed amendments are historic and will create a consistent method for handling government access to online communications, said Sophia Cope, director of government affairs at the Newspaper Association of America. But the measure likely won’t go to the Senate this year, forcing the process to start over again next year, she said.