WI Supreme Court rules personal e-mails will remain private

Today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Schill v. Wisconsin Rapids School District, saying personal e-mails of public employees will remain private. The ruling followed several other states rulings, who also favored public employee privacy.

¶8 Several other states have already addressed this issue. Each has concluded that the contents of government employees’ personal e-mails are not information about the affairs of government and are therefore not open to the public under their respective open records acts. We know of no state that has reached the conclusion that the contents of such personal e-mails should be released to members of the public.

¶9 For the reasons set forth, we too now conclude that while government business is to be kept open, the contents of employees’ personal e-mails are not a part of government business. Personal e-mails are therefore not always records within the meaning of Wis. Stat. § 19.32(2) simply because they are sent and received on government e-mail and computer systems.

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 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. Read the full background here.

See the full court ruling.