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A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is pushing a repair to a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court docket choice that hampered the general public’s means to acquire lawyer charges in sure public data lawsuits towards public officers — however the high Meeting Republican stays noncommittal concerning the invoice.
The case, Buddies of Body Park v. Metropolis of Waukesha, concerned a public data dispute between town and a citizen group. Waukesha was working to carry a semi-professional baseball crew to city. A bunch of involved residents, Buddies of Body Park, submitted a public data request to town looking for copies of any agreements town had reached with the crew’s house owners or the semi-professional league.
Town partially denied the request and refused to provide a duplicate of a draft contract. Buddies of Body Park employed an lawyer and sued. A day after the lawsuit was filed, and earlier than the native circuit court docket took motion, town produced a duplicate of the draft contract.
The case ultimately labored its strategy to the state Supreme Court docket, which decided that Buddies of Body Park was not entitled to lawyer charges as a result of it technically had not prevailed in court docket — the group acquired the document with out motion from the circuit court docket.
The ruling “really incentivizes public officers to illegally withhold data as a result of it forces requestors to incur authorized prices that will by no means be recovered,” mentioned Invoice Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Info Council, throughout a public listening to concerning the invoice.
Max Lenz, an lawyer representing the Wisconsin Newspaper Affiliation, mentioned the state Supreme Court docket ruling incentivizes public officers to “successfully dare the general public to sue.”
“The Supreme Court docket’s ruling in Buddies of Body Park flipped the general public data regulation presumption of openness on its head,” he mentioned.
The laws, spearheaded by state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, would supersede the excessive court docket’s ruling and permit a requestor to acquire lawyer charges if a choose determines that the submitting of a lawsuit “was a considerable issue contributing to that voluntary or unilateral launch” of data, in line with the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
The invoice has garnered assist from an uncommon coalition of organizations. Seven teams, a few of which continuously foyer, have registered in assist of the invoice, together with the liberal ACLU of Wisconsin and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Legislation & Liberty.
An analogous model of the invoice was permitted by the state Senate final session however didn’t obtain a vote within the Meeting. The laws was permitted by the state Senate final week.
The laws’s path ahead stays unclear. Meeting Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, informed reporters just lately that “our caucus has by no means talked about it.”
“It’s actually one thing we might talk about, however we don’t have a place on it presently,” Vos added.
Are you curious about studying extra about public data? Right here’s a primer on what kinds of data ought to be accessible to you — and easy methods to request them.
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