It’s finally starting to feel like summer out there, and we’re hoping the warm weather is here to stay. Grab a friend and find something fun to do!

Before we jump in, a quick reminder: tomorrow, May 12th at noon, we’re hosting a subscriber-only webinar covering everything you need to know about fees and costs in public records.

We’ll break down what you might have to pay if you get things wrong, how to handle cost disputes, and—importantly—the new-ish law that lets agencies charge requesters for the cost of redacting video records. You won’t want to miss it. The dress code is business casual, but all the cool kids will be wearing this.

And off we go…

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And have you marked your calendars for our next webinar at Noon on Tuesday May 12^th! Be sure to order your lunch here.

This week we’re stepping away from the Ohio Supreme Court and pulling a case from the 10th District Court of Appeals in Columbus that shows how public records can affect everyday people. People like this.

Court Case(s) Review: Doe v. Ohio State Univ., 2024-Ohio-5891, (10th Dist.)

This week, we’re giving the Ohio Supreme Court a break and pulling a case from the 10^th District Court of Appeals in Franklin County. It’s a good reminder that public records law doesn’t just affect governments; it can touch anyone who does business with a public entity. Even people who are just buying Ohio State Football tickets. This is a local football team, if you haven’t heard about them.

In this case, a ticket reseller tried to get the personal contact details of every Ohio State season ticket holder. Luckily, he didn’t succeed.

Between March and July 2023, a ticket reseller identified as John Doe fired off six public records requests to Ohio State asking for the names, home mailing addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of faculty, staff, and donors who’d bought season tickets for Buckeye football and basketball. He also wanted seat locations and other ticket-holder details. Ohio State handed over some spreadsheets with names and work emails for the earliest requests but refused to turn over home addresses or personal emails, arguing they weren’t “records.” It never responded at all to four later requests. Doe sued to force OSU’s hand. The Court of Claims told Ohio State to turn over most of the information except home addresses and anything about students. Both sides appealed to the 10th District.

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Here’s a guided tour of today’s adventures.

This week we’re building an entire issue around use of force reports. We start with a case that shut the door on blanket CLEIR denials of use of force reports.

Boom! That’ll be that door slamming.

From there, we head to Alabama for a body cam review that highlights just how differently our neighbors treat this footage.

And then we close with a reader Q&A on redacting use of force narratives that officers copy and paste from open-case incident reports.

And, we’re scheduling our next members-only Public Records Briefing webinar. Mark your calendars for at Noon, Tuesday, May 12. The topic will be “The Price of ‘No’: When Denials Get Expensive.” We’ll cover all the ways getting public records can cost your agency big bucks.

Ready? Let’s rock.

Court Case(s) Review: State ex rel. Standifer v. Cleveland

Today, our case review and question go hand in hand. You all asked us about use of force reports, and we wanted to give you a background on the current landscape.

In this 2022 opinion, the Ohio Supreme Court made it significantly easier for the public to get detailed police use of force reports under Ohio’s Public Records Act. Journalist Cid Standifer and her newspaper asked the city of Cleveland for the individual reports that officers fill out when they use a certain level of force on the job. These reports spell out why the officer was on scene, what led up to the force, how much resistance the officer met, and exactly what kind of force the officer used. The reports themselves generally aren’t part of the criminal case or investigation, but they’re obviously related.

The city handed over summary spreadsheets but refused to release the full individual reports for dozens of incidents, claiming they were completely protected as “confidential law-enforcement investigatory records,” or CLEIR.

As a brief refresher, law enforcement agencies lean on the CLEIR exception all the time, but it isn’t the catch-all some assume it to be. To qualify, a record must pass a two-part test. First, it must actually “pertain to a law enforcement matter” of a criminal, civil, or administrative nature -- not a routine personnel or employment file. Second, releasing the record must create a “high probability” of revealing one of the four categories of CLEIR protected information: the identity of an uncharged suspect, a confidential source or witness, specific investigatory techniques or investigatory work product, or information that would endanger someone’s safety. If the agency can’t satisfy both prongs, the record goes out the door.

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Not everyone deals with open meetings issues regularly, but for those who work for a township, city council, or county commissioners’ office, these questions can come up fast. You’ve probably heard that government meetings have to be “open,” but what does that actually mean under Ohio law? Here’s some basic Q&A on Ohio’s Open Meetings Act, found in R.C. 121.22.

Open Meetings Q&A

1. What exactly counts as a “meeting” under Ohio law?

We know meetings have to be open, but what actually counts as a “meeting”? Under R.C. 121.22, a meeting is any prearranged gathering of a majority of the members of a public body for the purpose of discussing or conducting public business. So, if you have a three-member board, two members getting together to talk shop could trigger the Open Meetings Act. What qualifies as a “public body”? What counts as “public business”? Those definitions raise plenty of questions on their own—but we have to keep you coming back for more. We’ll dig into those terms in upcoming editions!

2. What notice must the public receive before a meeting can happen?

The notice required by law depends on the type of meeting. For regular meetings, the public body must establish a reasonable method for anyone to determine the time and place of those meetings. For special meetings (meaning any meeting that falls outside the regular schedule) the public body must give at least 24 hours’ advance notice to any news media outlet that has requested notification, including the time, place, and purpose of the meeting. In the case of an emergency requiring immediate official action, the members calling the meeting must immediately notify those same news media outlets of the time, place, and purpose of the emergency session.

If you have a public meeting without providing notice, any decisions made at that meeting could be invalidated!

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This week we have a court case where a convicted criminal’s blitz of 46 public records requests in two hours led to a $1,000 damages award, plus a bodycam review from Las Vegas. Sounds like a great script for a movie!

Court Case(s) Review: State ex rel. Luikart v. Washington Court House, 2026-Ohio-111.

Get a drink of water because this case is crazy! So far this year, the Ohio Supreme Court has been super busy churning out public records cases involving prisoners and criminal defendants. This week’s decision features a paltry 45 public records requests from a defendant with mucho time on his hands.

Aaron Luikart, who was facing criminal charges in the city’s municipal court, sent 46 emails over a two-hour span on a Sunday evening in November 2024 (closed circuit video of him sending his requests here, probably). You read that right, 46 emails. Each email requested one or two specific documents from more than 40 different cases in that same court—but none from his own ongoing criminal case. The city attorney prosecuting Luikart, misinterpreted these as requests for discovery materials tied to Luikart’s case and ignored them entirely. Nine days later, Luikart filed a lawsuit asking the court to force the city to hand over the records. And the kicker, he asked for $45,000 in statutory damages for the delay.

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States not named Ohio

Glad you work in Ohio? You’ll be even more glad when we tell you about a proposed Tennessee law about public records requests for body cameras. Unlike Ohio, Tennessee apparently lacks a standard public records policy surrounding body camera footage and its availability. A new proposed law would set standards for the state and all of its police.

What’s more interesting is that in Tennessee, you must be a resident of the state to make public records requests! Officials or administrators there can require proof of address, in order to release documents. According to the article, people from other states have recruited someone who is a Tennessee resident to request records on their behalf. At least one author of the proposed law wants to change that to allow out-of-state residents to request records.

Reading the article gives you a better appreciation for Ohio law and how it uniformly applies to our 900+ police departments around the state. While you might not like parts of it, hopefully we can all agree that having hundreds of police departments make up their own standards for redaction and public records requests would be more annoying than this.

Finally, just a courtesy reminder since we’re talking about it. If you haven’t adopted your records policy to allow your agency to charge for body camera records requests, you should do that ASAP!

Court Case(s) Review: State ex rel. Fenstermaker v. Grogan, 2026-Ohio-482.

We have another new case where an inmate wants public records (apparently they have lots of time on their hands). Or perhaps they’re just trying to make some quick money while other employment opportunities are diminishing.

In this case, inmate Tony Fenstermaker requested public records from the Marion County Prosecutor’s office. Fenstermaker sent a certified mail request in March 2024 for three items: (1) certified financial statements from 2016 to 2021, (2) the office’s records retention schedule, and (3) a cashbook tracking money received from 2016 to 2022. The public office responded about two weeks later, providing the retention schedule and introductory letters for the statements, but it omitted the attachments to those statements. This will be important later when we come back for statutory damages, stay tuned.

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Court Case(s) Review: State ex rel. Macksyn v. Spencer, 2026-Ohio-44.

This week we have another new case for you from the Ohio Supreme Court. Like last week, this serves as a reminder that timing can be a very expensive mistake.

In this case, an inmate named Delanor Macksyn sued several Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) employees for failing to promptly provide the public records he’d requested. Macksyn sent several requests in March and April 2024 asking for emails and other documents related to himself—specifically, discussions about prison policies or his treatment. You read that right: he was requesting internal discussions about himself. Goofy!

The DRC staff initially provided some records but delayed or ignored others, leading Macksyn to file a mandamus lawsuit in June 2024. When the court first considered the case in 2025, it mostly denied his request for a writ but ordered DRC to either produce specific emails from three of his requests or officially confirm they didn’t exist. Following that order, the DRC provided emails for two of the requests but said the third didn’t exist. There’s the first problem: some emails the inmate requested in 2024 weren’t provided for more than a year!

The only issue here was whether Macksyn could recover the $1,000 in statutory damages allowed for delayed responses to public records requests. If you read last week’s edition, you know this can get very expensive. The breakdown is $100 for each business day of delay, starting from the day the lawsuit is filed, capped at $1,000 per request. Since each request is considered individually, the total can stack up fast.

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Court Case(s) Review: State ex rel. Henderson v. Washington Court House, 2026-Ohio-110.

This will warm you up, because we’ve got a case hot off the press. The Ohio Supreme Court decided this one just last month, and it serves as a critical reminder to respond to public records requests out as soon as you can.

In this instance, the city only paid a $1,000 fine. But had the Chief Justice had her way, the city would’ve been facing a $60,000 penalty for failing to respond. That’s a lot of money! It’s a stark reminder to ensure you respond to those (sometime annoying) requesters in a reasonable amount of time.

The case involved Cody Henderson, who was facing criminal charges in the Washington Court House Municipal Court. One day, Henderson sent 77 emails to the city attorney in just under two hours. If only it were as easy to respond to public records requests as it is to send them!

In total, these emails amounted to 60 separate requests for specific documents from 27 municipal court cases. Notably, none of the requests involved Henderson’s own pending criminal case. Maybe Henderson was looking to prepare his own defense.

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Public Records in the News

We know you love Ohio public records, but let’s look elsewhere to gain a better appreciation of just how good (or bad) we have it here!

This issue, we’re going to look west to Illinois. Their public records law (which they call FOIA just like the federal government) underwent some changes in 2026. One of the most interesting changes was an amendment to their definition of public records. Illinois changed their definition to exclude “junk mail” from being a public record. This means that before January 1, 2026, Illinois municipalities apparently had the duty to store, maintain, and provide public access to everything from those “you’ve won a free cruise” junk faxes to good old fashioned junk they received in the mail! In Ohio, our definition is written in a way that automatically excludes junk mail and that kind of stuff from being a public record. Why? Because that junk fax doesn’t document the work of the office!

The other change in Illinois that might make its way to Ohio was a change to the definition of a person. Illinois (and other states) have been seeing more records requests that are generated by online forms, bots, computer programs, or possibly even AI. To address this, Illinois law now allows an agency to ask the person to confirm they are a real person if they have a reasonable belief the request wasn’t submitted by a human. How does the person do that? Either by phone call or an email reply. The government isn’t allowed to ask for personal information though (e.g., names, government ID #s, etc.). It’s probably possible that an AI agent or bot could fake the confirmation, but this will certainly cut down on some automated requests.

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Are you feeling hopeful about 2026? We took a video of our New Year’s Day. We hope to have it expunged soon. Do you have a bunch of New Year’s resolutions?! Well, we hope becoming a public records law expert is one of them. Because this is how we’re feeling about another year of the Public Records Briefing.

Practical Redaction Tips from Real Life

Recently, people all around the country have been discussing the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. In one of its most recent releases, the U.S. Department of Justice (Mark used to work there but it was long ago, and he’s never been to Epstein Island, so don’t blame him) redacted some text on the pages it released. However, savvy social media uses discovered that the redaction weren’t done properly. In fact, users could copy the entire PDF page and then paste all of the text (including the supposedly redacted text) into a new document!

There’s a lesson here for public records administrators – like you!

With Adobe PDFs, you need to take great care when redacting a document. The easiest and most secure way to do this is to utilize the redaction feature within Adobe Acrobat. When you redact text through Acrobat, the text and all of the underlying information is destroyed in a secure way that prevents anyone from learning what was redacted. The downside to this is it requires an Adobe Acrobat subscription that can be pretty expensive if you’re buying it for many users.

It is possible to redact securely without using the paid version of Adobe Acrobat. However, it’s riskier and requires someone to know what they’re doing. The key mistake in many failed redactions — like those seen in some Epstein-related documents — is simply covering text with a black box or shape. This only hides the information visually; the underlying text remains in the PDF’s structure and can often be revealed by copying and pasting, searching, or using basic tools.

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We’re wrapping up 2025 with our final edition of the year. Since it’s a holiday week, we’re going to give you a special section: your 2026 public records New Year’s Resolutions!

We’ll see you in 2026 with more public records fun. We’re already planning some great topics and remain open for any suggestions you may have!

Body Cam Review: When Transparency Backfires

In this week’s review, we’re looking at a mess down in Alabama that deals with the intersection of public records and law enforcement crisis communications. It’s less about redaction but still a very interesting story.

The Birmingham Police Department was involved in a shooting that killed a 26-year-old named Jamal Williams. As is often the case, the community demanded immediate answers and release of the footage. In an effort to be transparent and calm the public, the Birmingham Police released the footage of the shooting very quickly. The police chief held a press conference where his agency’s footage (as well as footage from another public agency) were released. In terms of crisis communications, this is what we almost always recommend. Body camera footage is far more likely to clear police than it is to show the police doing something wrong.

But there was a catch. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA)—basically their version of BCI—was supposed to be doing the independent investigation into the shooting. When Birmingham released the video, ALEA publicly announced they were ending their investigation and then they walked away from case.

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On our next webinar on December 10^th – that’s this Wednesday at Noon - we’ll go over the brand new Ohio Supreme Court’s decision (finally!) about police officers identities and Marsy’s Law. We’ll also walk through some officer-involved shooting incidents and talk about how real-world redaction works. Tune in for our last webinar of 2025! For subscribers, we’re offering a massage option during the session. Order here.

Exceptions (a) through (bbb): 149.43(bbb)

Today marks a historic day. After over 100 editions and countless hours, we’ve made it to the FINAL exception listed in R.C. 149.43 (at least until the General Assembly comes back next year and gives us some new ones). It seemed impossible at the time, but we pushed through. It was like a marathon. Now we’re here and want to thank those who have been with us throughout this adventure. Give yourself a high five!

That brings us to (bbb), which protects the location of American Indian burial sites. State law gives the Ohio History Connection (formerly known as the Ohio Historical Society) authority over burial sites for American Indians found in Ohio. Ohio is home to many historic burial grounds, most famously the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks near Chillicothe, which are around 1,500 to 2,000 years old!

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ALERT: While it’s not directly about public records, we’re offering a Webinar next week that is relevant to all government employees who deal with communications. It’s not part of the Public Records Briefing membership, but you will likely find it very valuable. We’ll cover all of the law surrounding what comments can be deleted from government Facebook pages. Unlike public records law, if you get this area of law wrong, you can be sued personally, putting your own money at risk. It will be Tuesday December 2 at Noon. Sign up now or send this sign up link to whoever in your agency runs the Facebook or other social media feeds.

Speaking of webinars, mark your calendars for December 10 and join us for another incredible Public Records Briefing Webinar. As always, we do it over your lunch hour, so be sure to order your lunch here. The Webinar topic is still being finalized. Do you have a good idea for a topic? If so, send it our way!

Exceptions (a) through (bbb): R.C. 149.43 (aaa)

Exactly 100 issues ago, when we started with R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(a), it seemed like we’d never get to the end. Now, here we are in triple letters with only two exceptions left to go! If the General Assembly doesn’t add any new exceptions (and they should be done legislating for the year), we only have one more exception to go. Sad, right?

Let’s talk about (aaa), and we don’t mean minor league baseball or the roadside assistance group. No this new exception was designed to protect that poor, underrepresented group of people: elected officials! Yep, this exception allows a public office to withhold an elected official’s future calendar entries. That means someone may request the calendar for an elected official for the previous day and any time before that. However, the calendar for any day that hasn’t happened yet (you know, the future) doesn’t have to be shared.

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Yep! Over nea…

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Exceptions (a) through (yy): R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(yy)

We continue our way through the 149.43(A)(1) exceptions this week with (yy). Exception (yy) is a new one and covers a topic that we used to get a lot of questions about at trainings. When law enforcement agencies started using License Plate Readers (LPRs), people would ask us if the data the LPRs captured could be withheld using CLEIR or a different public records exception. We said no, due to the always-recording nature of LPRs and the lack of any other suitable exception. Remember, the rule for CLEIR is the record must have been created because police had a specific suspicion of misconduct and – of course – LPRs capture all sorts of license plates not involved in misconduct.

So, after answering that question for years, someone finally talked to their elected representatives about changing it! So we now have R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(yy) which protects records captured by an LPR system maintained in a law enforcement database. The exception covers the actual images captured by these cameras as well as any other data. This exception keeps someone’s stalker from requesting LPR data to track down the date and time that a particular person was at a certain intersection.

Remember, license plate numbers themselves don’t have an easy exception that covers them. They’re not personal information because people can’t look up who they belong to! But given the potential issues with LPR data being public, this exception makes sense.

Court Case(s) Review: Kidd v. City of Wilmington, 2025-00644PQ

This week we have another decision from the Court of Claims. And this one is a win for the good guys (aka government agencies).

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And we love public records law, too. So let’s kick off into that!

Exceptions (a) through (xx): 149.43 (xx)

This week, we’re continuing down the list of exceptions in R.C. 149.43(A)(1) and continuing into some of the new exceptions from the General Assembly’s recent budget bill. At this rate, we’ve almost made it all the way through the alphabet. . . twice! And given that one of the newest exceptions is now (zz) – insert your own snoring joke here -- maybe we’ll get all the way through a third time.

This week’s exception comes from the (xx) and covers doctors and medical professionals. It’s a pretty simple exception that says that if a doctor or medical professional is reported to the State Medical Board about a health issue that might affect their ability to practice safely, that information stays private. It covers both what the medical person submits when applying to be licensed (or license renewed) and any documents that are made in response to that filing. The idea is to protect sensitive medical details from the public view and encourage robust reporting.

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Let’s rock on!

Exceptions (a) through (aaa): R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(ww)

Moving through the exceptions, we’re getting closer to the end. However, as the General Assembly keeps adding exceptions, maybe we’ll never get there!

This week, we look at R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(ww), which protects an affidavit or confirmation letter submitted under R.C. 319.28. We know, you love getting a scavenger hunt from the General Assembly as much as we do.

R.C. 319.28 permits designated public service workers (think first responders!), former public service workers, or the spouses of either to ask the county auditor where they live to remove the name of the person filing from any publicly available database, such as the property tax list of the county or the real estate system in the county. R.C. 319.28 allows first responders to protect their privacy and stop bad guys from easily finding their home address. Instead of their names, the county auditor would put their initials in the system to hide their identity.

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In two days, Ryan and Mark will be back and better than ever with our next subscriber only Zoom. They’ve been practicing a new routine – all for your educational pleasure! Don’t forget to mark it on your calendars and order lunch (you can use this link to have it delivered) in preparation for this upcoming webinar on September 17^th at Noon. You won’t want to miss all we’ve been working on.

Exceptions (a) through (aaa): 149.43 (vv)

We threw you off by putting the case first last week, but it’s not every day we see such a seismic shift in the law. At least, it wasn’t until maybe the last three years! But we’re going back to the normal routine and starting off with the next exception as we slog through the Public Records Act and its many wondrous exceptions. We’re getting close now, and we may run out of exceptions soon. Should we run through them all again or just wait for the General Assembly to add more? Let us know what you think.

Anyway, today’s exception is a great one. Exception (vv) protects a redaction request form. These are forms submitted by individuals who wish to have certain personal

information redacted from a public record available online. The forms can come from anyone and can ask that the person’s Social Security number, bank information, and similar information be redacted. The Attorney General’s office prepares the general form to be used, and individuals may access when they believe personal information is contained in a public record. Shouldn’t these things be redacted from online records in the first place? Yes! However, given the size of Ohio, there are hundreds of millions of records scanned in by county recorders, auditors, and many others. It’s a certainty that some personal information is going to be missed. Hence the form!

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