The Oklahoma Supreme Court issued two precedential rulings about the state Open Records Act on Nov. 25, one involving county jail trusts and the other dealing with data about data.
In Lawson v. LeFlore County Detention Center Public Trust, justices said county trusts contracted to operate jails are public bodies, but the court held they are not law enforcement agencies, whose obligations to release records are more narrow.
In Brooke v. Reed, the state’s high court reviewed a case dating back to pandemic-era emails and ruled that metadata are not inherently part of communications requested under the state transparency law.
“Government openness is essential to democracy, as the greatest threat to privacy comes from government secrecy,” Justice Douglas Combs wrote in the LeFlore County case’s majority opinion. “Public access to government files allows citizens to verify accountability, prevent arbitrary abuse of power and monitor whether public officials are discharging their duties in an honest, efficient and competent manner. Transparency serves as a fundamental check against secrecy in the political process and ensures democratic oversight of those in power.”
Jail trust case notable for many counties
The LeFlore County case, filed by bondsman James Lawson in September 2023, carries broad implications for counties that assign their jail operations to public trusts instead of their sheriff’s office.
While the Open Records Act specifically limits the type of information that “law enforcement agencies” must release, the holding that county jail trusts are not law enforcement agencies means those restrictions do not apply for jail operators in Oklahoma County, Tulsa County, Comanche County, Pottawatomie County and beyond.
Lawson, who owns Lawson Bail Bonds, asked the LeFlore County Detention Center for “all audio and video footage” and “all communications” surrounding a verbal altercation his ex-wife, Amber Lawson, had at the jail in August 2023 while trying secure the release of two detainees. According to Combs’ summary of events, the “jailer allegedly yelled at her and cursed at her,” so Lawson made his request, which also sought names of all employees on duty that day and a copy of the jail’s “policies and procedures.” After the jail trust declined to release the documents by claiming it qualified for the law enforcement agency exemptions, Lawson filed suit.
In December 2024, LeFlore County District Court Judge Jon Sullivan granted summary judgment to the county jail trust in a one-paragraph journal entry that contained no recitation of the facts and no explanation of how he applied the law.
Joined in the 6-3 decision by Chief Justice Dustin Rowe, Vice Chief Justice Dana Kuehn, Justice James Edmondson, Justice Noma Gurich and Justice Richard Darby, Combs said Sullivan had erred by considering a jail trust to be a “law enforcement agency” under the ORA.
“The jail trust is not ‘charged with enforcing state or local criminal laws.’ The jail trust is a creature of [Title 19, Section 904.1-904.10] and [Title 60, Section 176]; it was created to accept and house prisoners,” Combs wrote. “Insofar as the jail trust merely houses and guards the criminal detainees and convicts, it has been charged with only one of the sheriff’s duties other than enforcing state and local criminal laws. Thus, the jail trust does not meet this second part of the definition of a ‘law enforcement agency,’ and it was error for the district court to find otherwise.”
The six-justice majority also held that jail trusts fail to not meet a specific part of the definition of “law enforcement agency,” which involves “initiating criminal prosecutions.”
“The jail trust has admitted it does not initiate criminal prosecutions,” Combs wrote. “Indeed, no evidence was presented in this record to demonstrate that the jail trust was specifically involved in proposing criminal charges in the circumstances giving rise to this particular request for records or that the jail trust is even more generically involved in proposing criminal charges otherwise. Thus, the jail trust does not meet this third part of the definition of a ‘law enforcement agency,’ and it was error for the district court to find otherwise.”
Notably, the LeFlore County case was designated as a “companion” case to another Open Records Act appeal pending out of Comanche County, where Gray Media Group — the owner of KSWO-TV — and former station reporter Seth Marsicano sued the Comanche County Facilities Authority in pursuit of video recordings that captured “the moments before, during and after the deadly assault” of a person detained at the jail in October 2023.
Comanche County District Judge Emmit Tayloe ruled in October 2024 that the county’s jail trust “is a law enforcement agency that has a legitimate interest in denying access to the requested video(s).” While Gray Media Group and Marsicano appealed two months before Lawson did, the Supreme Court released its decision in Lawson’s case first.
As of the publication of this article, the Comanche County case docket had not been updated with its own order or to reflect the high court’s decision in the LeFlore County case.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice James Winchester disagreed with the majority’s holding that jail trusts are not law enforcement agencies. Winchester, who was joined by Justice M. John Kane IV, noted that Lawson has sued for records twice before.
“In each case, plaintiff was dissatisfied with the entity for not fulfilling certain requests under the ORA as he desired, rather than in accordance with what the ORA permits. This case is no different; however, it will significantly alter who is included in the definition of ‘law enforcement agency’ under the ORA,” Winchester wrote. “I dissent to the majority’s rigid interpretation of law enforcement agency, which excludes jails.”
Winchester said the Open Records Act contains indications that the Legislature’s “intent” was “for jails to be included in the definition of law enforcement agency.”
“We cannot ignore that law enforcement activities take place at county jails,” he wrote. “(…) Without these facilities, law enforcement would have no place to detain individuals during their criminal prosecutions. If the definition of ‘initiating criminal prosecutions’ as outlined in [Title 51, Section 24A.3(5)] must be broad enough to include activities carried out by police departments and county sheriffs as the majority suggests, it should also encompass county jails, which are equally integral to law enforcement.”
Leslie Briggs, the local Oklahoma legal initiative attorney with the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, praised the majority’s decision in the LeFlore County case.
“The Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision in Lawson is an important affirmation of the ORA’s policy promoting government transparency,” she said. “The decision is firmly grounded in the plain language of the statute. Public access to jail records keeps us all safe by exposing and preventing constitutional abuses and ensuring correctional staff have the resources, training, and oversight necessary to safely operate jails.”
Narrow majority finds metadata not subject to ORA
In Brooke v. Reed, plaintiff Nicholles Brooke sued Commissioner of Health Keith Reed in an effort to obtain copies of records “regarding the COVID 19 pandemic” sent to Gov. Kevin Stitt by the Oklahoma State Department of Health between Jan. 1 and March 23, 2020.
On April 8, 2020, — only 16 days after the records request was submitted — Brooke filed a lawsuit to compel the release of the records. The Oklahoma State Department of Health provided responsive documents in PDF format between August 2020 and February 2021. In 2021, Brooke clarified he was requesting “copies of the native files” including metadata from Microsoft Outlook emails, but OSDH objected in some instances.
While Oklahoma County District Court Judge Natalie Mai ruled in favor of OSDH, Brooke successfully appealed to the Court of Civil Appeals. After OSDH appealed to the Supreme Court, however, Justice M. John Kane IV wrote in a five-justice majority opinion that the Open Records Act “does not” require a public body “to provide email records in their native file format, which contains embedded metadata.”
“We find the ordinary, everyday meaning of ‘data files’ does not include embedded metadata. The term ‘data files’ is broad, but it does not mean data about data,” Kane wrote. “Additionally, nothing in the ORA requires that copies of records be produced in the specific format requested.”
According to Kane’s summary of events, Brooke “contended the metadata found in native files was essential for organizing, searching, and understanding the record” and argued some of the emails produced were missing information about the sender, recipient and the date the message was sent.
The department’s attorneys argued the request had been filled, copies of the native files were not required to be released under the law and that the request was excessively disruptive.
Kane said the Legislature bears the burden of updating the ORA as technology changes over time.
“When the ORA was adopted in 1985, the Oklahoma Legislature was simply not contemplating the metadata Brooke is requesting. The definition of ‘record’ has not changed since the act’s adoption in 1985. Outlook was not released by Microsoft until 2012. While metadata certainly existed in the early years of the digital age, the Oklahoma Legislature did not intend for the public to have access to metadata, as we know it today,” Kane wrote. “Determining how advancements in technology should affect government transparency and the public’s access to public records are matters of policy for the legislative branch.”
Kane said it is up to legislators “to determine what constitutes the inspection, copying, or mechanical reproduction of modern data files.”
“Metadata can mean many things. If the ORA includes metadata, the Oklahoma Legislature needs to define the term,” Kane wrote. “If the Legislature grants the public access to digital copies of native files, what reasonable procedures must public bodies adopt to protect the integrity of its records as well as confidential and sensitive information contained in metadata? These questions (and more) are policy issues requiring study and debate that goes far beyond the court’s role of interpreting statutes.”
Kane was joined by Kuehn, Edmondson, Gurich and Darby in reaching the court’s precedential decision. Concurring in result, Jett wrote separately to argue that Brooke’s initial request had been fulfilled because it did not articulate a desire for metadata.
“This case can be resolved by answering a narrow question: Did the State Health Department provide Nicholles Brooke the records he requested? I believe the answer is plainly ‘yes,’ so we need not decide whether agency metadata is subject to the Open Records Act,” Jett wrote.
Combs dissented, arguing in favor of the Court of Civil Appeals decision and noting that courts in four other states — Arizona, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Washington — with similar open records laws have found metadata subject to open records requests.
Combs said the majority opinion “addresses an issue different from that raised by the commissioner of health in his petition for certiorari, demonstrating the majority’s determination to address an issue they deem more important — despite its waiver by the petitioner.”
“The majority’s assertion that the statutory language ‘data files’ unambiguously ‘does not include embedded metadata’ or ‘data about data’ is nothing more than ipse dixit,” Combs wrote. “If the State Health Department generates records containing data about data, the language of sections 24A.3(1) and 24A.5 is broad enough to require production of those records.”
Winchester joined Combs’ dissent. Rowe also dissented, but did not join or write an opinion.
(Update: This article was updated at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 2, to include comment from Leslie Briggs.)
