Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:32 PM for 15h 16m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 69.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1973, legendary horse Secretariat wins the Triple Crown.
On Tuesday, a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce v. Evers, 2022 WI 38 was a welcome win for advocates of government transparency. Although the particular circumstances involved COVID-19 data the state had collected, the ruling’s reach extends beyond any particular set of data.
In this case, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (and two other trade associations) sought to prevent the State of Wisconsin from releasing to the public a list of all Wisconsin businesses with over twenty-five employees that had at least two employees test positive for COVID-19 (or had two close-case contacts). The Wisconsin Department of Health Services had collected this information, but the private trade groups sought a court ruling barring release of those public records.
The case began when the Journal Sentinel requested from DHS public records about COVID-19 under Wisconsin’s Public Records Law, Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31–19.39, and Manufacturers & Commerce in response sought a court order to prevent the release of those records.
A lower court granted a temporary injunction against release, but a court of appeals ruling reversed that lower court decision. The trade associations then appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent the release of the records on COVID-19 cases or exposures. The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals decision, ruling that Wis. Stat. § 19.356(1) of the Public Records Law limited judicial review prior to an agency’s release of records:
Moreover, concluding that the Declaratory Judgments Act “otherwise provide[s]” for pre-release judicial review of a public records response would effectively repeal §19.356(1). As discussed previously, the legislature enacted §19.356 to limit the rights to pre-release notice and judicial review that this court created in Woznickiand Milwaukee Teachers.11 See Moustakis, 368 Wis.2d677, ¶27. Although those rights may have been enforceable via a declaratory judgment action while they existed, the legislature abrogated them when it adopted §19.356.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce v. Evers, 2022 WI 38 ¶ 19.
The decision and dissent appear below —
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