Arkansas law enforcement officials can no longer rely on a decades-old federal law as a reason to withhold the names and personal information of adults from vehicle crash reports, according to a court ruling Thursday.
The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a 2015 lower court ruling that the Arkansas State Police's policy of redacting personal information of adults cited in crash reports violated the state's Freedom of Information Act.
By 5-2, the majority found that crash reports do not qualify as "motor vehicle records" and that a federal protection of personal information in such records does not apply to the information in crash reports. A 1994 federal law prohibits the sale or disclosure of motor-vehicle records.
In a dissent, Justice Karen Baker wrote that the personal information in the crash reports -- which is typically provided to officers from state driver databases -- is protected by the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act.
Keith Wren, the lead attorney in the case who represented his brother and fellow attorney, Daniel Wren, said he was pleased that the state's highest court agreed with the June 2015 ruling by Judge Morgan "Chip" Welch in Pulaski County Circuit Court that voided the state police's policy of withholding the information.
"I'm not really surprised, but I'm certainly glad," Keith Wren said. "The ruling today isn't going to change the present status quo. It's just there to say that the state police cannot go back to the policy."
State police spokesman Bill Sadler, who was a party to the case, deferred any questions to the Arkansas attorney general's office.
A spokesman for Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, Judd Deere, said Rutledge and her staff will review Thursday's ruling.
"As the Court noted, its decision is out of line with the majority of courts that have addressed this federal statute," Deere said in a statement.
"The Attorney General believes this decision jeopardizes citizens' privacy rights, and she is evaluating her options, including a potential petition to the United States Supreme Court."
Sadler said the agency's policy since the lower court ruling last year allows people to inspect the reports in person, and those reports include unredacted information on adults.
In early 2015, state police officials -- citing a state law that required the agency to redact personal information about minors in crashes-- changed its policy for public disclosure of the crash records to prohibit "bulk" inspection of the reports in person.
For years, attorneys and other professionals had relied on such inspection of crash reports and similar public documents for the purposes of finding potential clients.
Daniel Wren requested several weeks of crash reports and was told by state police that the personal information on the reports-- such as addresses or dates of birth -- would be redacted. Agency officials said the redactions were necessary to comply with the 1994 federal law.
Daniel Wren filed suit in June 2015, arguing that the public and the media were being deprived of "vital" public information. Last June, Welch froze the policy and ruled that the state police violated the state's freedom of information law. State attorneys appealed in July.
Thursday's decision did not open up any "floodgates" for personal-injury attorneys to find clients but rather affirmed the "robust" nature of the state's freedom of information law, according to University of Arkansas at Little Rock law school professor Robert Steinbuch.
"It's no surprise to me that the Supreme Court came out this way. The Supreme Court in Arkansas has done a very, very good job of interpreting the FOI [law] and ensuring that its purpose is realized by journalists and citizens," Steinbuch said. "Every legislative session or so there's some government group that seeks to constrict the FOI, and almost always, that attempt fails. ... The refrain goes, 'The FOI interferes with us doing our job,' but that statement is moronic."
Both Deere and Sadler declined to explain why state officials waited 21 years to get into compliance with federal law.
But Steinbuch said that more and more state government officials are trying to withhold information out of a concern for federal law.
"Often, those claims are rubbish," Steinbuch said. "Statements like that, when scratched on the surface, usually fall apart because you'll find federal agencies in charge of those privacy acts ... will often give out guidance that is wholly inconsistent with the state actors claim they must do."
Thursday's majority ruling, penned by Justice Robin Wynne, noted that though there is no Arkansas case law controlling the question of whether the crash records fall under federal protections, the court has "liberally" interpreted the state's freedom of information laws in favor of disclosure.
Wynne wrote that a 2002 case in federal court in Colorado found that Congress "did not intend 'information on vehicular accidents' to be included within the law's prohibition of disclosing 'personal information.'
"Keeping in mind the intent of Congress in passing the [law on motor-vehicle records], it's clear that a vehicle accident report is not included in the definition of 'motor vehicle record', regardless of whether, as a matter of convenience, some of the information included in an accident report may be taken from or verified by a database maintained by the Office of Motor Vehicles," Wynne wrote. "Furthermore, Congress specifically provided that 'personal information' does not include information on vehicular accidents."
But it is the source of that information that Baker, joined by Justice Courtney Goodson, argued should prevent the disclosure of personal information on accident reports.
"The majority focuses on the document as a whole as opposed to the specific information in the report," Baker wrote. "The question is whether there is personal information at issue. The [federal law] does not protect entire documents, but rather personal information. Thus, the documents must be analyzed to determine whether the content includes protected information."
The issue, Baker wrote, concerned different understandings of what qualified as "information on vehicular accidents." State police argued that it meant that the only information that could be released wasn't excluded by federal law. Wren argued that the phrase should include all the information on the report.
Steinbuch said the case shouldn't be seen as a win for personal-injury attorneys, sometimes disparagingly called "ambulance chasers."
He said the decision benefits all citizens.
"We are not permitted to ask the purpose of people asking for documents. ... Then it comes down to what you as a public citizen are entitled to know. That's a slippery slope towards governmental opacity rather than transparency," Steinbuch said.
"In this instance, with the ruling, it may benefit attorneys more than other people. But each access allowed by the government of public records benefits the public overall, with differing individuals pursuing different records."
A Section on 04/29/2016