PA Supreme Court bans paper's access to cell phone bills

December 22, 2008 | Filed in: Open records | Cell phone records
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A newspaper cannot view all the information in the cell phone records of two Pittsburgh City Council members, Pennsylvania's highest court has ruled.

[DOWNLOAD THE 12/18/2008 COURT RULING]

The state Supreme Court said in its unanimous ruling Thursday that there is a strong privacy interest in shielding the numbers of people the council members called and of those who called the lawmakers on their city-paid cell phones.

"Appellants have failed to set forth any cogent argument that the disclosure of the telephone numbers ... would serve a strong public function," Justice Seamus McCaffery wrote in the opinion.

The decision upheld a 2005 Commonwealth Court ruling that said the telephone numbers must be redacted before the records could be released.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2003 sought records from Jan. 1, 2002, through Aug. 1, 2003, for the city-paid cell phones issued to all council members and then-Mayor Tom Murphy. The newspaper sued after council members Leonard Bodack and Barbara Burns refused to release their records...

http://www.openrecordspa.org/news_files/1ece9960c747468f392fad453a928504-22.html