(The Center Square) — Records prepared or maintained by a private contractor working for a public agency in Georgia are “public records” under the state’s Open Records Act, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled.
In July 2022, Ryan Milliron submitted an open records request to the Georgia Institute of Technology for records related to Associate Professor Emmanouil “Manos” Antonakakis’ services to the school. Milliron also sent an open records request via email to the associate professor’s personal counsel.
Milliron argued that the associate professor worked for Georgia Tech as both an employee and a private contractor and had in his possession as a private contractor public records subject to the Open Records Act. Milliron also argued Antonakakis was the founder and owner of two companies formed to conduct services “with, for, and on behalf of” Georgia Tech and/or to receive “funding from the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to carry out work for Georgia Tech’s benefit.”
Unsatisfied with the documents Georgia Tech supplied, Milliron sued Antonakakis to compel him to respond to the open records request and provide documents. A Fulton County judge ultimately dismissed the lawsuit, and the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld the decision, setting up this week’s ruling from the state’s top court.
Nothing “in the plain language of [state law] or any other provision of the Open Records Act dictates that only agencies — whether through a designated officer or otherwise — can receive requests for public records and/or are obligated to produce public records or otherwise make such records available for review,” Justice Shawn Ellen LaGrua wrote in the unanimous opinion.
The “language of the Act contemplates and permits that a request to inspect and copy public records can be made to someone outside of an agency,” she further writes. “This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that … the General Assembly used the term ‘custodian,’ as opposed to ‘agency,’ in specifying the party upon whom an open records request can be made. And no other provision in the Act states that only agencies can be custodians of public records. That no such provision exists is further support for our conclusion that a private contractor could be a ‘custodian’ to whom open records requests can be made under the Act.”
An open records group lauded the ruling.
“The Georgia Supreme Court opinion is a welcome confirmation of Georgia’s commitment to open access to public records,” Sarah Brewerton-Palmer, vice president of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation board of directors and lead attorney in the foundation’s friend-of-the-court brief in the case, said in a statement. “The Court’s ruling, which allows members of the public to seek open records directly from government contractors, is crucial for protecting meaningful records access in Georgia.
“Government contractors are often the only ones who have copies of the records they create during their work,” Brewerton-Palmer added. “Forcing the public to go through a government agency to get those records would in many cases mean that the records are never actually provided. To perform meaningful oversight of government contractors, journalists and citizens must be able to see the public records in contractors’ possession, and the Georgia Supreme Court’s ruling makes sure that can happen.”