WI Supreme court to determine if public employees’ personal emails fall under public records law

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will consider on Friday whether personal emails of public employees that are maintained on publicly-owned computers are subject to disclosure under the public records law in Schill v. Wisconsin Rapids School District.

Schill started in April 2007 when private citizen Don Bubolz decided he wanted access to non-work emails of five teachers in Wisconsin Rapids School District during a period in 2007. He requested all emails sent from the computers of those teachers.

The district’s computer use policy allowed its teachers and other employees to use the district’s email for occasional personal use. District employees were advised that the district owns not only the computers, but the email accounts used by the employees.

The Wisconsin Rapids School District concluded that the emails constituted public records because they were maintained on a public computer network. The teachers sought to block the release of their personal emails. The circuit court denied the injunction and ordered the district to release all of the personal and work-related emails.

The Supreme Court will decide whether the personal emails are “records” under the public records law. There is apparently no published case in Wisconsin that addresses whether purely personal emails kept on a public computers constitute public records under the statute.

If the emails are found to fall under the public records law, the Supreme Court will have to decide whether the presumption of disclosure will outweigh the public interest in protecting privacy, a balance that can be hard to strike.