Michigan: Mackinac Center and Virginia Tech Professor Dr. Marc Edwards Sue Wayne State Over Flint Water Documents

News Release:  MIDLAND — The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation and Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards launched a lawsuit today against Wayne State University for deliberately ignoring multiple Freedom of Information Act requests. The requested documents are related to questions about the qualifications and actions of Wayne State University personnel who were awarded millions of dollars in research […]

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Colorado: City Council votes to release police chief recruitment records after Judicial Watch lawsuit

The Fort Collins City Council on Tuesday unanimously voted to release some records related to the city’s police chief recruitment process after a lawsuit from conservative group Judicial Watch. The group “uses the open records or freedom of information laws and other tools to investigate and uncover misconduct by government officials and litigation to hold to […]

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New Jersey: State Supreme Court will hear S.J. open public records case

The New Jersey Supreme Court decided it would hear a dispute between Galloway Township and the New Jersey public-records advocate and blogger John Paff over the state’s Open Public Records Act.

The conflict is over the access of electronic records under OPRA.

What is not in dispute is that Paff made an electronic request for information. Continue…

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Editorial: Police department accountability shouldn’t require a lawsuit

A police force that picks and chooses the laws it will honor probably doesn’t deserve to call itself a law enforcement agency. The St. Louis Police Department behaves as if Missouri’s Sunshine Law doesn’t apply uniformly to departmental records and the fees it charges to access them.

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Michigan’s Mackinac Center Files Open Records Lawsuit Against State Government Over Flint Water Documents

The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit today against the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for delaying for months the release of emails related to the Flint water crisis.

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EFF Fights to End Prior Restraint Against MuckRock

EFF on Wednesday asked a Washington state trial court to lift its order that forced the public records website MuckRock to take down documents one of its users had lawfully obtained.

The motion EFF filed on behalf of MuckRock and its co-founder, Michael Morisy, argues that the court order requiring the site to de-publish these public records was an unconstitutional prior restraint.  Continue…

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CMD Wins Open Records Lawsuit against Wisconsin Governor Walker

On Friday, May 27, a judge resoundingly rejected Gov. Scott Walker's elaborate efforts to hide from the public his role in deleting "the search for truth" and the Wisconsin Idea from the UW's mission statement.

And his effort to throw a cloak of secrecy over a wide range of decision making under the guise of protecting government "deliberations" from public view was also repudiated.  Continue…

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Kentucky to pay papers nearly $700K to settle open records suit

Kentucky will pay the state's two largest newspapers nearly $700,000 to settle a long-running dispute over access to records of child abuse deaths and serious injuries.

The agreement ends seven years of litigation that resulted in far-reaching public access to state social service records in cases where children die or are seriously injured by abuse or neglect.

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