Freedom of Information

ILLINOIS--A private contractor that worked closely with the federal agency which hired it must provide nonexempt records to a reporter filing a federal Freedom of Information Act request, a federal District Court in Chicago ruled in early May.

KANSAS--The notification provisions of Kansas' Megan's Law require that Nathan Snelling's registration as a sex offender be publicly available, the state's high court ruled in March.

Snelling was required to register because when he was 17 he had sex with a 15-year-old girl. A lower court had held that that registration would not be publicly disclosed.

ARKANSAS--Failure to notify all media organizations of an emergency government meeting does not necessarily violate the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, the state Supreme Court in Little Rock held in mid-April.

ROUNDUP--Following similar efforts in several states, surveys of government compliance with records requests were released in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. The results of both surveys were similar to their predecessors, revealing the widespread failure of records custodians to release information as required by law.

D.C. CIRCUIT--A federal trial judge erroneously dismissed Rep. John Boehner's (R-Ohio) lawsuit against Rep. James McDermott (D-Wash) over disclosure to The New York Times and other news organizations of a tape recording of an intercepted telephone conversation, Boehner's attorney argued before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington (D.C. Cir.) in late April.

WISCONSIN--The public's interest in making its own decisions about how a school board handled charges of sexual abuse against a highly respected elementary school principal outweighed the privacy or reputational interests of the principal himself, a state appellate court in Waukesha ruled in late March, authorizing release of personnel and investigatory documents to the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison.

OHIO--The Ohio Supreme Court in Columbus in late March reversed an appellate court ruling that a school superintendent had no authority to discard letters from parents that addressed the controversial conduct of a high school basketball coach.

OHIO--Two recent Ohio cases help define the state's open records laws in the wake of a federal decision that exempted from disclosure much of the information contained in police officers' personnel files.

ELEVENTH CIRCUIT--The split between federal circuit courts over the validity of the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act widened in early April when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta (11th Cir.) struck down the law as unconstitutional. The Fourth Circuit struck down the DPPA in September 1998, but two other circuits, the Seventh and Tenth, held that the law passed constitutional muster.