7 Open records.

• Position: Stateline - Brief article

In a case dating to Sarah Palin's stint as governor, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that some emails sent from private accounts are subject to the state's open records law. Citizen activist Andree McLeod sued the state in 2008 after she learned then-Governor Palin was using a private email account to conduct state business. The lawsuit sought to establish that private e-mail messages involving state business should be considered public records and therefore preserved for the public record. The state countered that officials should be able to decide which emails to save, and that deleted correspondence was automatically exempted from the open records law. The Court upheld much of a...