Mixed bag from high court
As befits a year in which anything, it seems, can happen, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s public records docket this term was marked by atypical cases.
In Voces de la Frontera vs. Clarke, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department redacted information from immigration detainer forms provided in response to public records requests, asserting that a federal immigration regulation required the redactions. A Milwaukee County judge and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals concluded that federal law did not require the redactions, but the Supreme Court disagreed.
Open government advocates were disappointed that the Supreme Court’s opinion focused almost exclusively on this interpretation of federal law, not the presumptions of openness enshrined in Wisconsin statutes.
In Teague vs. Schimel, the court looked at whether the Wisconsin Department of Justice violated individuals’ rights by releasing background check materials that sometimes reflected the criminal records of other individuals with the same names and birth dates or that had been used as aliases.
Those besmirched by the offenses of others argued that lives were negatively affected as a result.
The Supreme Court agreed that Teague had reason to complain that his cousin’s record was released as his. Openness advocates anticipate the ruling will not have a broad impact because the issues it raised had less to do with transparency in government than allegations that government failed to correct defects in its process.
In Democratic Party of Wisconsin vs. Wisconsin Department of Justice, the court ruled that the Department of Justice does not have to release videos of training sessions that it argued would give away sensitive information about law enforcement techniques.
This decision especially disappointed open government advocates because of majority author Justice Rebecca’s Bradley’s suggestion that the partisan motivation of the requester could be taken into account, contrary to how the law previously has been interpreted. Already, this argument has been invoked in other cases.
In Krueger vs. Appleton Area School District, the court determined that a school committee formed to review course materials was a “governmental body” subject to the Wisconsin open meetings law, rejecting arguments to the contrary. It was a major win for openness and accountability.
The court took a big step backward when it decided to close its own administrative rule meetings, which had previously been public. This result was unexpected and, to open government advocates, dismaying.