Appeals court says state can’t block records requests due to investigations

In a significant First Amendment win, the Tennessee Court of Appeals on Friday ruled the state wrongly kept routine public records from multiple agencies secret.

The appeals court embraced and strengthened the state’s public records laws and said public documents stay public even when they are ensnared in an ongoing criminal investigation.

The ruling came after the state attorney general’s office refused to release state travel records, emails and other public documents related to Jason Locke, former acting director of the TBI, and another public official while multiple agencies investigated allegations that the two were having an affair.

The court ruled the state “went out of its way to cloak records that otherwise were accessible.”

“Prosecutors may use already publicly available information as part of their case but that information does not cease to be public,” Judge D. Michael Swiney wrote in the 14-page ruling. “The records at issue could have been accessed by Tennessee citizens all along, and should have been disclosed by the State at the outset upon request.”

The appeals court overruled a Davidson County judge who agreed the records should have been withheld. It is unclear if the state will appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, cheered the appeals court ruling in a statement.

“You shouldn’t be able to transform ordinary public records, like a state agency’s travel expenses, into confidential records just because police or the district attorney deems them possibly relevant to a criminal investigation,” she said. “That would be granting an enormous power to close all kinds of public records and undermine the public records act. “As the Court said, it was an ‘astonishing proposition’ by the state.”

The ruling came after WTVF NewsChannel 5 and its chief investigative reporter sued over the disputed records while Locke was under investigation.

The appeals court did not order the state to pay the news organization’s attorney’s fees. The court did order the state to pay other court costs related to the appeal.

Locke and the other state employee ultimately were cleared in the criminal investigation.