Arizona ruling makes public records easier to obtain

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(The Center Square) - The lawyer representing a professor who sued the Arizona Board of Regents says a recent Arizona Supreme Court ruling will make it easier to obtain public records.

Last week, the court unanimously ruled in Abraham v. Arizona Board of Regents that state agencies can’t unjustly withhold information from people seeking public records.

According to the lawsuit, University of Arizona professor Matthew Abraham submitted public records requests from November 2018 to September 2020 to determine whether the school was complying with anti-discrimination laws.

The university provided some records to Abraham between 2019 and 2020, but withheld records, citing confidentiality.

The Center Square reached out to the University of Arizona and the Arizona Board of Regents for comment on Wednesday afternoon, but did not get a response.

Parker Jackson, an attorney for The Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, said the point of public records laws is to allow citizens to “know what their government is up to.” Applauding the Supreme Court ruling, he added, “The court has made clear it’s not going to put up with clever ways that the government tries to invent to get around that broad purpose."

Jackson, who represented Abraham in the lawsuit, told The Center Square on Tuesday that the ruling made it “pretty clear” that a “legal duty to preserve records exists now.”

When receiving a public records request, government agencies “should be erring on the side of disclosure,” said Jackson, but added they tend to err on the side of non-disclosure.

Abraham’s attorney sent a letter to the university in October 2020, asking the Arizona Board of Regents to fully comply with the professor’s public records request. Soon after, the school’s general counsel acknowledged it “was incorrect” to withhold records and said the counsel's office would find and hand them over to Abraham.

One of the items the professor sought was a recording of an October 2019 faculty governance meeting at the college. However, the university told Abraham a month later that the recording was “no longer available” and continued to withhold records.    

Abraham’s attorneys sent letters in November 2020 and February 2021, asking the school again to fulfill the professor’s public records request.

In February 2021, the school defended its past conduct and said it would continue to assess its public records obligations.

The professor filed a special action complaint against the Arizona Board of Regents in September 2021. Two months later, the university handed him more than 1,700 pages of documents.

The Board of Regents attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed after it was filed. A Pima County Superior Court judge dismissed numerous claims by Abraham, noting the school had provided most of the requested documents. The Superior Court also denied the professor’s attorney fees.

In 2025, the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed the vast majority of the lower court’s ruling.

The Arizona Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s decision and vacated the Court of Appeals' decision. The state Supreme Court remanded the case back to the trial court.

In its ruling, the Arizona Supreme Court said that governmental agencies can’t make the final decision of whether a disputed record can be withheld. The ruling added that courts must independently review withholding and redaction decisions.

“The public records laws exist so that citizens can be informed about what their government is doing,” the ruling said.

“A public agency has a duty to promptly disclose all public records that are not statutorily exempted,” it added.

When a government agency destroys a court record, it counts as a denial of a public record, the ruling said.

The state Supreme Court also said the person filing the public records request gets back their attorney fees if they substantially prevail.

Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, said he hopes the Arizona Supreme Court ruling will “create more transparency” and “allow people to know what’s going on inside government.”

The Legislature should consider passing a bill requiring state agencies to place an immediate preservation hold on requested records and imposing consequences when those records are later destroyed, said Petersen, who's running for attorney general against Democratic incumbent Kris Mayes.

Petersen told The Center Square Tuesday that if elected attorney general, he would work with the Legislature to introduce public records laws. Petersen noted the attorney general’s office plays a role in public records and open meeting laws. 

According to Jackson, a person could end up paying tens of thousands of dollars in a public records legal dispute.

Petersen said there are two sides as to why public records requests have gotten expensive. He noted Arizona law allows state and local public bodies to charge fees for people seeking public records.

“Some of these cities, counties and government agencies are making it extremely prohibitive, costly and a deterrent to gaining public records,” he explained.

But before fees were implemented, people made large public records requests that ended up costing taxpayers money because of their size, Petersen told The Center Square.

Petersen said a balance needs to be found between ensuring transparency and managing costs.