Michigan Court of Appeals Asks Legislature to Update the State's FOIA

In a "friendly" lawsuit set up to determine whether emails from teacher union leaders are public records if they are contained in a school district's computer system, the Michigan Court of Appeals said no, they are not.

The Court also asked the Legislature to clarify and update the state's 33-year old Freedom of Information Act to address electronic records. Judges Mark J. Cavanagh, E. Thomas Fitzgerald and Douglas B. Shapiro wrote that the case presented a "difficult question requiring that we apply a statute, whose purpose is to render government transparent, to a technology that did not exist in reality (or even in many people's imaginations) at the time."

Read more about the decision here.