Every month, my firm sends out the Public Records Press to its clients.  With the Press, we hope to assist our clients with educating their staff about the importance of public records compliance. We hope that our clients will post the Press in a prominent place or distribute it to all employees for maximum benefit.  The March edition is reprinted below answering the question in the subject line.

Private emails may not be so private after all.

The Ohio Supreme Court has already answered “yes” to this question. State ex rel. Glasgow v. Jones, 119 Ohio St.3d 391. In addition to seeking emails on some specific topics, the requester sought “all emails, including, but not limited to, any and all emails on private email systems.”

The Court held that public work done on a personal email account creates public records.  This means that someone may receive access to your personal email account because you advanced your public business with your private email account.  While truly personal emails are not public records, you and potentially others may need to sift through your personal email account to determine what records must be provided to the public. Continue reading →