Appeals Court rules against school district in FOIA case The Arkansas Court of Appeals last week issued a decision affirming a lower court’s ruling that the state’s Freedom of Information Act requires documents to be provided electronically when available and when requested.
which it can be readily converted.
able to.
The school district argued the request took up too much time between scanning
The school district was ordered to provide the records to Delany for free The appeals court in a decision by Judge Larry Vaught said nothing in the law allows a records custodian to choose a medium for providing records “based on the number of records it must redact or based on its preference to have a hard copy of documents produced … “
According to the Arkansas DemocratGazette, the appeals court decision marked the second time the Pulaski County School District was found to have violated FOIA related to a request by Stephen Nicholas Delany. Delany had requested 1,816 pages of documents to be provided electronically. Instead, the school district argued that it was easier to turn over paper copies and the district attempted to charge the requestor $272. The lower court and the appeals court cited the language of FOIA in Arkansas Code An. 25-19-105, which states that public records may be requested in a readily available format or a format to
paper records into an electronic format and subsequently making redactions. The appeals court affirmed Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chip Welch, who said, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, that the district must scan the documents and provide them electronically because the district was
The newspaper reported that a decision on attorneys fees is still pending in circuit court, as is a petition by Delany’s attorney, Matt Campbell of Little Rock, to hold the school district in contempt for not immediately turning over records after Welch had ordered it to do so. The full appeals court decision may be viewed at: https://opinions.arcourts.gov/ ark/courtofappeals/en/item/367308/index. do
2019 Pulitzer Prize winners announced this week Winners of Pulitzer prizes for 2019 were announced earlier this week. The Pulitzer is considered journalism’s highest honor. Here are the winners in each category and the work for which the winners were awarded:
business empire riddled with tax dodges.”
Public service: South Florida Sun Sentinel, coverage of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings.
National reporting: The Wall Street Journal staff for reporting on the payoffs of two women alleged to have had affairs with President Trump, which triggered criminal inquiries.
Breaking news reporting: Pittsburgh PostGazette staff, “immersive, compassionate coverage” of the shootings at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. Investigative reporting: The Los Angeles Times’s Matt Hamilton, Harriet Ryan and Paul Pringle for reporting on accusations that a University of Southern California gynecologist had abused hundreds of young women. Explanatory reporting: The New York Times’s David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner for an 18-month investigation into the finances of President Donald Trump. The citation noted the investigation “debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a Arkansas Publisher Weekly
Local reporting: The Advocate staff in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for coverage of a Jim Crow-era law by which Louisiana juries could sentence defendants without unanimous verdicts.
International reporting: Associated Press’s Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikry and Nariman El-Mofty for a yearlong series on the atrocities of the war in Yemen; and the staff of Reuters, with contributions from Wa Lone and Kywa Soc Oo for coverage of the banishment and murder of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Feature writing: ProPublica’s Hannah Dreier for coverage of Salvadoran immigrants on Long Island in New York “whose lives were shattered by a botched federal crackdown on the international criminal gang, MS-13.” Commentary:
The
St. 3
Louis
Post-
Dispatch’s Tony Messenger for commentary about Missouri’s system of requiring poor, rural Missourians charged with misdemeanors to pay unaffordable fines or face jail time.
Criticism: The Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada for essays that “joined warm emotion and careful analysis” about books on government and the American experience. Editorial writing: The New York Times’s Brent Staples for editorials on racism that were written with “extraordinary moral clarity.” Editorial cartooning: Freelancer Darrin Bell for cartoons that focused on disenfranchised communities and on the Trump administration. Breaking news photography: The Reuters photography staff for photography of migrants traveling to the United States from Central and South America. Feature photography: The Washington Post’s Lorenzo Tugnoli for photographic storytelling of the famine in Yemen. April 18, 2019