RCFP attorney defends Louisiana journalist sued by local government over public records requests

An attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is representing the editor of the West Baton Rouge Independent, a small news outlet in Louisiana, to help the journalist fend off a government lawsuit aimed at silencing his reporting. 

It’s the first case for the Reporters Committee’s Louisiana-based staff attorney, Virginia Hamrick, who joined the organization last month as part of an expansion of its Local Legal Initiative.   

In March, the West Baton Rouge Parish Government and its fire district sued John Summers, the publisher, editor, and sole reporter for the WBR Independent, after he submitted two requests for public records related to the fire district’s response to a recent warehouse fire. 

The lawsuit seeks, among other things, a court ruling that allows the government to withhold public records from Summers and other requesters unless they pay potentially hefty fees. It also asks the court to order Summers to pay the government’s attorney’s fees.

“Louisiana’s Constitution and public records law explicitly protect the public’s right to access government records, so it’s particularly shocking for the government to have preemptively sued a local journalist for seeking to exercise that right,” Hamrick said. “This is a meritless attempt to deter reporting on the parish and fire district, and to make it more difficult for anyone else seeking government transparency to request information in the future.”

On behalf of Summers, Hamrick countersued the parish and fire district, arguing that the government’s lawsuit is a transparent effort to shirk its obligations under the Louisiana Public Records Law. 

The WBR Independent, which Summers started in May 2025 after the closure of other newspapers in the area, is one of the only news outlets that exclusively covers the West Baton Rouge community. It reports extensively on the parish government, including on public safety and emergency services. According to the WBR Independent website, public records are foundational to its coverage.  

In early March, Summers requested records related to the fire district’s response to a major fire at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge. The countersuit states that after a parish official told Summers there would be a $121.50 fee for hard copies of the requested records, Summers asked to instead inspect the electronic versions of the records in person. 

Later that month, Summers filed another request for records related to a meeting about the fire. But before he received a response to that request and was able to inspect the records related to the first request, the parish sued him. According to court filings, an attorney for the government told Summers that the parish wouldn’t respond to his second March request or any future public records requests until the court issued a ruling in the case.

The government’s lawsuit asks the court to issue a protective order that stays the fire district’s obligation to respond to any pending or future public records requests. It also argues that the government should be able to ignore Summers’s public records requests until he pays the fee for copies of the records he requested in early March, even though the agency never told him the costs in advance and he hasn’t received the records. 

That argument, if accepted, would mean anyone who submits a public records request could be indebted to the government — even if they didn’t receive the responsive records, the countersuit states.  

What’s more, Hamrick argues in the countersuit, the government is asking a court to issue an array of orders that “ultimately serve the same goal: empowering them to demand payment (on Mr. Summers and anyone else seeking government transparency) for responding to public records requests and complying with the PRL.”

The countersuit asks the court to reject the government’s claims, order the government to respond to Summers’s public records requests, and award Summers attorney’s fees and civil penalties.

 The Reporters Committee’s Local Legal Initiative provides dedicated, on-the-ground legal support for local journalists and newsrooms doing investigative and enterprise reporting in their communities. In addition to Louisiana, the program is also active in Colorado, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. It’s set to expand to Minnesota and Michigan later this year.