Court Opinion

ID: 9409435
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-18 12:08:21.130688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:50.427123
License: Public Domain

TEXAS COURT OF APPEALS, THIRD DISTRICT, AT AUSTIN

                                     NO. 03-22-00052-CV

                      Fort Bend Independent School District, Appellant

                                                v.

                Ken Paxton, Attorney General of the State of Texas, Appellee

              FROM THE 459TH DISTRICT COURT OF TRAVIS COUNTY
NO. D-1-GN-19-003596, THE HONORABLE MAYA GUERRA GAMBLE, JUDGE PRESIDING

                           MEMORANDUM OPINION

               Fort Bend Independent School District (the District) sued Ken Paxton, Attorney

General of the State of Texas, seeking a declaration that the cell phone logs for personal cell

phones belonging to District trustees and employees are exempt from the disclosure requirements

of the Texas Public Information Act (PIA).       See Tex. Gov’t Code §§ 552.001-.353.         The

Attorney General argued that the cell phone logs were public information subject to the PIA’s

disclosure requirements to the extent they contained information about cell phone calls and text

messages made in connection with the transaction of the District’s official business. The parties

filed cross motions for summary judgment, and the trial court granted the Attorney General’s and

denied the District’s. On appeal, the District challenges the trial court’s ruling as an incorrect

reading of the PIA. We will affirm the trial court’s judgment.
                     FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

               The District received requests for the cell phone records, redacted to exclude

records related to personal phone calls, of ten individuals who were either members of the

District’s Board of Trustees or District employees. The District withheld the phone records on

the ground that they were excepted from disclosure under the PIA because they did not constitute

“public information” as that term is defined in PIA section 552.002(a). See id. § 552.002(a)

(defining “public information”).    In conjunction with its conclusion to withhold the phone

records, the District sought a decision from the Attorney General’s Open Records Division (the

ORD) that the cell phone records at issue were not “public information” covered by the PIA. See

id. § 552.301 (governmental body that receives written request for information it wishes to

withhold from public disclosure must ask for attorney general decision). The ORD’s letter

decision noted that “virtually all of the information in a governmental body’s physical possession

constitutes public information” subject to the PIA. The ORD also stated that information that is

“written, produced, collected, assembled, or maintained” by an individual officer or employee of

a governmental body in the officer’s or employee’s official capacity is subject to disclosure

under the PIA if it pertains to official business of the governmental body.            See id. §

552.002(a)(3). The ORD concluded that “to the extent the telephone calls at issue were made in

connection with the transaction of” the District’s public business, the cell phone records, which

were logs of calls made and received and text messages sent and received, were subject to the

PIA. The ORD emphasized that a governmental body may not “circumvent the applicability of

the [PIA] by conducting official public business in a private medium.” Therefore, the ORD

stated, it was of no consequence either that the logs at issue were logs of calls and texts made

from personal cell phones that the District did not pay for or that the call logs were not

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“collected, assembled, or maintained by” the District. The ORD determined that call logs of the

individuals’ cell phones, to the extent they reflected calls and text messages made in connection

with the transaction of the District’s public business, must be released unless otherwise excepted

from disclosure.

               The District then timely filed suit against the Attorney General seeking to

withhold the call logs from the requestor. See id. § 552.324 (governmental body may file suit

against attorney general seeking declaratory relief from attorney general opinion issued under

section 552.301). The Attorney General answered and requested that the district court render

judgment declaring that the call logs must be disclosed to the requestor as determined by the

ORD. The District and the Attorney General filed cross-motions for summary judgment; the

district court granted the attorney general’s motion and denied the District’s. The District

perfected this appeal.

                                  STANDARD OF REVIEW

               We review the district court’s granting of a summary judgment de novo. Valence

Operating Co. v. Dorsett, 164 S.W.3d 656, 661 (Tex. 2005). A party moving for summary

judgment must demonstrate that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that he is entitled

to judgment as a matter of law. Tex. R. Civ. P. 166a(c); see also Provident Life & Accident Ins.

Co. v. Knott, 128 S.W.3d 211, 215 (Tex. 2003). When both sides move for summary judgment

and the trial court grants one motion and denies the other, the reviewing court should review the

summary judgment evidence presented by both sides, determine all questions presented, and

render the judgment the trial court should have rendered. Texas Worker’s Comp. Comm’n v.

Patient Advocates, 136 S.W.3d 643, 648 (Tex. 2004).

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                  This appeal involves statutory construction, which presents questions of law that

we review de novo. State v. Shumake, 199 S.W.3d 279, 284 (Tex. 2006). Our primary objective

when construing statutes is to give effect to the Legislature’s intent, which we seek first and

foremost in the text of the statute. First Am. Title Co. v. Combs, 258 S.W.3d 627, 631-32 (Tex.

2008). The plain meaning of the text is the best expression of legislative intent, unless a

different meaning is apparent from the context or application of the plain meaning would lead to

absurd results. Molinet v. Kimbrell, 356 S.W.3d 407, 411 (Tex. 2011). We consider the statute

as a whole, not as isolated individual provisions, and we do not give one provision a meaning

out of harmony or inconsistent with other provisions, even though it may be susceptible to such

a construction standing alone. See Texas Dep’t of Transp. V. Needham, 82 S.W.3d 314, 318

(Tex. 2002).

                                           DISCUSSION

                  The PIA’s purpose is to provide the public with access to complete information

about government affairs and the official acts of public officials and employees. Tex. Gov’t

Code § 552.001(a); Jackson v. State Office of Admin. Hearings, 351 S.W.3d 290, 293 (Tex.

2011). In support of this purpose, the PIA directs that it be liberally construed in favor of

disclosure of requested information. See Tex. Gov’t Code § 552.001; Jackson, 351 S.W.3d

at 293. The PIA contains a non-exclusive list of categories of public information, see Tex. Gov’t

Code § 552.002, as well as certain specific exceptions from required disclosure, see id.

§§ 552.101-.154.      Exceptions to the PIA’s disclosure requirement are narrowly construed.

Arlington Indep. Sch. Dist. V. Texas Att’y General, 37 S.W.3d 152, 157 (Tex. App.—Austin

2001, no pet.).

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               The central issue in this case is whether call logs of telephone calls made and

received and text messages sent and received by the District’s trustees and employees on their

personal cell phones can constitute “public information” as that term is defined in the PIA. The

District argues that they cannot for the following reasons: (1) the logs were not “collected,

assembled, or maintained” by the District and the District does not have a right of access to

them; (2) the logs were not “collected, assembled, or maintained” by individual officers or

employees of the District in their official capacities; and (3) the logs were not “used in

connection with the transaction of the District’s official business.” The District maintains that

records of calls made and texts sent by public officials using their personal cell phones are not

records that are “collected, assembled, or maintained by or for” the governmental body and

therefore do not constitute “public information” under the PIA. The Attorney General counters

that the call logs were created by the District’s trustees and employees when they chose to

transact official District business using their personal cell phones and the PIA does not require

that information be “used” by the governmental body to fall within the definition of “public

information.” The Attorney General argues that the call logs constitute information produced for

the District to which the District has a right of access or by the District’s trustees and employees

acting in their official capacities while transacting District business and, consequently, constitute

“public information” as that term is defined in section 552.002 of the PIA. See Tex. Gov’t Code

§ 552.002(a)(2), (3).

               Because it is dispositive, we consider whether the cell phone logs at issue in this

case fall within the definition of “public information” found in PIA section 552.002(a)(3). This

section provides, in pertinent part, that “public information” means “information that is written,

produced, collected, assembled, or maintained [] in connection with the transaction of official

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business [] by an individual officer or employee of a governmental body in the officer’s or

employee’s official capacity and the information pertains to official business of the governmental

body.” Id. § 552.002(a)(3). As an initial matter, regarding what the District was required to

disclose, the ORD limited that information to the cell phone logs of phone calls “made in

connection with the transaction of public business of the district.” Therefore, the only remaining

issues are (1) whether the cell phone logs constitute “information that is written, produced,

collected, assembled, or maintained” by the District’s trustees and employees; (2) whether that

information was written, produced, collected, assembled, or maintained by the District’s trustees

and employees “in their official capacities”; and (3) whether the information “pertains to official

business” of the District. We address these issues in turn.

               The “information” at issue here is the dates and times of calls and text messages

made and received, the length of the calls, and the phone number of the incoming or outgoing

call or text message. The parties join issue on whether the information at issue was “produced”

by the District’s trustees and employees or, instead, by the third-party cell phone provider who

compiled the call log. The definition of “produce” includes “to cause to have existence or to

happen: bring about.” See Webster New Int’l Dictionary (2002). The information contained in

the cell phone logs was “caused to have existence” by the District’s trustees’ and employees’

actions of making or receiving phone calls or text messages.         Thus, that information was

“produced” by them. The District’s trustees and employees were aware that information about

their conduct in making and receiving phone calls and text messages in connection with the

transaction of the District’s public business on their personal cell phones was being captured,

compiled, and recorded by their cell phone service provider in the form of a call log and that the

call logs were a routine and expected consequence of their actions. The fact that the cell phone

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service provider was the entity that actually printed and distributed the record of the information

created by the District’s trustees and employees does not alter the fact that the information itself

was the product of those individuals’ actions and, therefore, produced by them. While the

word “produce” has more than one dictionary definition, the most reasonable one in the context

of the PIA as a whole is the one chosen here. See Gulf Metals Indus., Inc. v. Chicago Ins. Co.,

993 S.W.2d 800, 806 (Tex. App.—Austin 1999, pet. denied) (observing that courts must

determine the meaning of terms in their particular context). The PIA’s express purpose is to

provide the public with “complete information about the affairs of government and the

official acts of public officials and employees.” Tex. Gov’t Code § 552.001(a). The PIA also

mandates a liberal construction to implement this policy and one favoring a request for

information. Id. § 552.001(b).

               The District asserts that the cell phone records themselves were compiled and

distributed by third-party cell phone providers, not the District’s trustees or employees, and

therefore are not “public information.” However, to exclude from the purview of the PIA

information “brought into existence,” i.e., “produced,” by a public official or employee that

reflects his official acts simply because a known consequence of the action would be creation of

a written record of that action is contrary to the PIA’s goal of promoting the public’s legitimate

interest in transparent government. See Greater Houston P’ship v. Paxton, 468 S.W.3d 51, 53

(Tex. 2015) (recognizing that PIA “imposes considerable disclosure obligations on ‘governmental

bodies’”); Adkisson v. Paxton, 459 S.W.3d 761, 772 (Tex. App.—Austin 2015, no pet.) (noting it

would be “absurd result” to conclude that public official “could conduct all his official County

business correspondence through his personal email accounts without it being subject to the

PIA”). The fact that a public official made or received a call or sent or received a text message

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in connection with the transaction of official business is “information” that the public has a

legitimate interest in. That information, even if conveyed by means of a call log maintained by

a cell phone provider, is still public information. We conclude that the information about calls

and text messages sent and received by the District’s trustees and employees that is contained

in the cell phone logs is “information that is written, produced, collected, assembled, or

maintained” by the District’s trustees and employees.

               We next consider whether the information in the call logs was produced by the

District’s trustees and employees “in their official capacities.” As previously noted, the ORD

decision limited the information that the District must provide to the requestor to calls and text

messages “made in connection with the transaction of public business of the district.” The PIA

provides that information is “in connection with the transaction of official business” if it is

created by “an officer or employee of the governmental body in the officer’s or employee’s

official capacity.” Tex. Gov’t Code § 553.003(a-1). Thus, by definition, the information the

ORD determined must be produced constitutes information produced in the District’s trustees’

and employees’ official capacities.

               The District, however, asserts that the information contained in the cell phone

logs cannot be considered to be information “in connection with the transaction of official

business” because, according to the District, the call logs “do not include any communicative

action” and the cell phone logs were not “used” in connection with a matter related to the

District’s official business. As an initial matter, the statute does not impose any requirement that

the information be “used” by the District to constitute public information. Nowhere in the

definition of “public information” does the term “used” appear. Second, we disagree that the

information contained in the cell phone logs does not meet the PIA’s definition of “public

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information” because it includes no “communicative action.” The statute requires that, to be

“public information,” the information must be in connection with the “transaction” of official

business. Id. § 552.002(a). This Court has determined that, in the context of the PIA, the term

“transaction” means “an act, process, or instance of transacting: as a communicative action or

activity involving two parties or two things reciprocally affecting or influencing each other.”

Adkisson, 459 S.W.3d at 771 (citing Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary 2425 (2002)). It

cannot be disputed that a telephone conversation or a text message exchange between two

individuals constitutes an act of communicating between two parties as well as an activity

involving two parties “reciprocally affecting” each other. Although the District maintains that

the cell phone logs do not themselves reveal the substance of the communications between the

parties, as would a recording of the phone call or transcript of the text message itself, that is not

required by the statute. Rather, the statute requires that the information be “in connection” with

the transaction, i.e., “in connection” with the parties’ communicative phone conversation or text

message exchange. See Tex. Gov’t Code § 552.002(a). Information is “in connection” with the

transaction of official business if it is “created by” an officer or employee of the governmental

body in his official capacity.    Id. § 552.002(a-1).     This Court has described the term “in

connection with” as one of “intentional breadth.” See Titan Transp., LP v. Combs, 433 S.W.3d

625, 637 (Tex. App.—Austin 2014, pet. denied). The Texas Supreme Court has also expressed a

“similar view.” See Tarrant County v. Bonner, 574 S.W.3d 893 (Tex. 2019) (citing Lippincott v.

Whisenhunt, 462 S.W.3d 507, 509 (Tex. 2015) (per curiam) (construing “in connection with” and

“relates to” as effective synonyms in context of Texas Citizens Participation Act)). The supreme

court has stated that it is generally error to construe the phrase as requiring more than a

tangential, tenuous, or remote relationship between the connected items. See ExxonMobil

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Pipeline Co. v. Coleman, 512 S.W.3d 895, 900-01 (Tex. 2017). It cannot be disputed that,

applying this broad definition, the cell phone logs—which record the date, time, and duration of

calls and text messages made and received by the public officials—are “in connection” with the

communications by public officials that gave rise to them. Moreover, it seems curious for the

District to suggest that the substance of the communications—recordings of calls or text of the

text messages—would be the proper subject of a PIA request because they would reflect

“communicative action” but the bare record of the communication’s occurrence would not.

Additionally, as already discussed, the cell phone logs meet the statutory definition of

information in connection with the transaction of official business because the information they

contain was “created” by the public officials through their use of the cell phone to make and

receive phone calls and transmit and receive text messages.

               Finally, we consider whether the information in the cell phone logs “pertains to

official business” of the District. The PIA defines “official business” as “any matter over which

a governmental body has any authority, administrative duties, or advisory duties.” Tex. Gov’t

Code § 552.003(2-a). Again, we note that the ORD has limited the information the District must

release to information about phone calls or text messages made in connection with the

transaction of the District’s public business. The District’s business is, by definition, a matter

over which it has authority, administrative duties, or advisory duties. Thus, information about

calls made in connection with transaction of the District’s business necessarily “pertains to

official business.” The District argues that, “practically speaking, there is no way for the District

to know whether the logs pertain to official business” because (1) the District cannot know

whether a call from a District trustee or employee to a number not included in that person’s list

of telephone contacts was a personal or District-business related call and (2) even calls that

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would appear on their surface to be in connection with District business, e.g., calls between

District trustees or employees, may not actually meet that definition because “colleagues are

oftentimes friends, and while a phone recording, transcript, or text message thread often contains

substantive communications, call logs do not.” While there can be no doubt that the District’s

observations about the difficulty of identifying which calls and text messages relate to its

business have merit, that difficulty is the result of the District’s trustees’ and employees’

decisions to use their personal cell phones to conduct official business. See Horton v. Welch,

No. 12-19-00381-CV, 2020 WL 1697439, at *4 (Tex. App.—Tyler Apr. 8, 2020, no pet.) (mem.

op.) (noting that governmental body may not circumvent applicability of PIA by conducting

official business using private medium). The District asserts that the ORD’s decision would

impose on every governmental officer or employee the draconian task of “tak[ing] notes for

every phone call.” (Emphasis in original). However, the District’s difficulty in ascertaining

which calls and texts pertain to official business, and which do not, does not inform our

initial determination of whether the cell phone logs the ORD has determined should be released

are, in fact, public information. See Industrial Found. of the S. v. Texas Indus. Accident Bd.,

540 S.W.2d 688, 687 (Tex. 1976) (holding that PIA does not allow either custodian of records or

court to consider cost or method of supplying requested information in determining whether such

information should be disclosed).

               Finally, the District argues that public officials have a reasonable expectation of

privacy in their personal telephone and text message logs. But to comply with the PIA request, it

is not necessary that the District seize the trustees’ and employees’ personal cell phones to search

for public records. The trustees and employees themselves can provide the information related

to their cell phone use that is related to the District’s public business—information about which

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they have no reasonable expectation of privacy—and withhold or redact any information that

is private or personal. The ORD has not ordered that the District release every piece of data

contained in the private cell phones of its trustees and employees. Instead, it has ordered the

release of information that relates to the District’s official business; public information that

happens to be contained in the cell phone logs of its trustees and employees.

                                        CONCLUSION

               We conclude that the cell phone logs the ORD has determined must be released

meet the definition of “public information” provided by section 552.002(a)(3) of the PIA. The

trial court did not err in granting the Attorney General’s motion for summary judgment, denying

the District’s, and ordering that the District release the information not excepted from disclosure

by the ORD. The trial court’s judgment is affirmed.

                                               ______________________________________
                                               Thomas J. Baker, Justice

Before Justices Baker, Theofanis, and Jones*

Affirmed

Filed: July 13, 2023
*
 Before J. Woodfin Jones, Chief Justice (Retired), Third Court of Appeals, sitting by assignment.
See Tex. Gov’t Code § 74.003(b).

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