New Supreme Court precedent: Private citizens’ email addresses used by local governments are public records

The Ohio Supreme Court's decision last month is sure to make the next edition of the “Yellow Book,” the manual that guides public officials and their attorneys on sunshine law compliance, for its effect on public offices’ response to records requests.

In an opinion released just before Thanksgiving, the court determined that a township’s mailing and email lists, used for the purposes of distributing newsletters to residents and businesses, were subject to the Public Records Act, R.C. 149.43. A requester had sought the lists, he argued, to “evaluate the conduct of the newsletter program,” “to learn who received the newsletter,” and to learn “whether some residents were omitted from the lists, whether some people received the newsletter by both mail and email, how ‘well-saturated’ the email list is, and whether the email addresses on the distribution lists are ‘valid or bot accounts.’”

Relying on court precedent making public employees’ and retirees’ home addresses nonpublic, the trial court’s special master found that the mailing and email lists were not public record because they were merely “contact information used for administrative convenience” and that their release would not further the purposes of the Public Records Act. The special master wrote that “the mail and email lists are kept solely for the administrative purpose of sending out the newsletter,” and the appellate court later agreed.

The Supreme Court reversed, however, holding that the lists “are not inconsequential administrative documents incidental to some primary function of the township, as suggested by the court of appeals in terming them ‘convenience[.]’” “Rather,” the court wrote, “the lists are central to connecting the township with its constituents, which is the purpose of a newsletter.””

The court further wrote that “[t]he lists document the intention behind a regular practice of the township: the distribution of its newsletter.”

For years public officials have relied on the Yellow Book and separate Ohio Attorney General guidance that similar lists were not public records for the reasons articulated by the lower court’s special master here. All that stands to change with this opinion.

What’s more uncertain is whether private residential and email addresses, which are frequently redacted from employees’ personnel files and many police reports, should now also be considered public simply because they document some sort of government “intention.” One could appreciate why the attorney general and organizations like the Ohio Township Association, the Ohio Municipal League, the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, and the Ohio School Boards Association all sought a different outcome.

The case is Hicks v. Union Twp. Clermont Cty. Bd. of Trustees, found here. Government offices and others operating under the Public Records Act should read the opinion carefully. Of course, please call on us if we can offer guidance in its wake.

Feel free to contact any member of the McDonald Hopkins Public Law team if you have questions