Courts

Please visit our Brief Bank to view some of the briefs filed by the plaintiffs in McBurney v. Mims, which challenges the provision in Virginia FOIA that says FOIA can be used by Virginia citizens only, not out-of-state residents.

The settlement terms of several wrongful death lawsuits brought in Spotsylvania County against a pharmaceutical company must be disclosed publicly and cannot be sealed in the court records, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled. The unanimous opinion upholds a circuit court ruling that it was improper to permit the suits to be settled without the details disclosed in court.

Virginia law barring people from posting Social Security numbers on the Internet is unconstitutional as applied to a privacy advocate's Web site as it existed at the time of the lawsuit.

Virginia Freedom of Information Act's prohibition on prisoner use for records not related to their court cases is constitutionally sound.

Where the Social Security numbers are redacted from voter registration application records, the documents will no longer be exempt from inspection.

The Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act is not an exemption to FOIA's disclosure requirements. City may not charge for summary/abstract of record without first reaching an agreeement with the requester.

Norfolk Airport Authority's response that it had forwarded a citizen's FOIA request to the Transportation Security Administration did not meet the standards of any of Virginia FOIA's required responses.

In considering certain newspaper publishers' application for a writ of mandamus, the circuit court erred in finding that a county board of supervisors did not violate the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by going into a closed session at a particular meeting and erred in failing to award reasonable costs and attorney's fees under the Act. Because the purpose of the closed session was not the formation or modifications of a procurement contract, it did not fall within the statutory public contract exemption of § 2.2-3711(A)(30), and special circumstances did not make an award of fees and costs unjust.

States cannot limit use of their public records laws to citzens/residents of that state (this case is from a federal appeals court that covers Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and The Virgin Islands).