Bye-bye, summer, and hello autumn. The seasons change, but the need to know public records law stays the same. We got you!
This issue, we’re back at the Ohio Supreme Court for a brand-new case from just a few days ago. This one comes from a repeat customer. Thomas Clark has sued the prison system so many times that the justices now cite his earlier losses against him. Burn! The decision covers a lot of ground -- records your office doesn’t keep, body camera footage nobody saved, video an inmate got to watch but not take home, and a fight over what the word “current” means.
From there we head to Fairfax County, Virginia, for body camera footage of a suspect grabbing an officer’s gun during a search in the woods, and we look at how Ohio law would handle the same release. Then we close with a reader question that we get more often than you’d think: can you post a juvenile’s mugshot?
One more reminder: our next subscriber-only webinar is September 15, and it’s all about Flock cameras and the records requests that countless agencies around Ohio have been getting about them.
It’s go time!
Court Case Review:
State ex rel. Clark v. Dept. of Rehab. & Corr., 2026-Ohio-3270
This case is hot off the presses. It’s newer than the sixth Spider-Man reboot.
If the name sounds familiar, it should. Thomas Clark, an inmate at Lebanon Correctional Institution, has taken the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to the Supreme Court over records enough times that we’ve lost count. This time, he sent five electronic messages requesting eight items. He came away with only one partial victory and zero dollars.
ODRC won most of it, but the way it won carries lessons for every public office. We’re going to go through the different types of records he requested and how the court ruled on each request.
Let’s start with the wins for ODRC.
Vendor documents. Clark wanted the terms of use for the prison phone, the tablet vendor, and the vendor’s contract. The prison’s records officer swore that neither document was created, stored, or maintained by ODRC. The contract lives at the Department of Administrative Services (a separate state agency). The Supreme Court said that ends the discussion: a requester has to show the records exist and are kept by the office he asked. The fact that ODRC later went and got a copy of the terms of use from the vendor as a courtesy didn’t create a duty that wasn’t there before.
