Ohio Supreme Court: Government workers didn’t need to make spreadsheet or disclose COVID-19 deaths, vaccinations

Ohio health officials were correct in declining to provide information about the number of COVID-19 deaths and vaccinations, even though the information is public, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled this week.

In a 4-3 ruling, the state’s highest court admitted that the information is a public record.

However, as Cleveland.com reported, Ohio’s public records law stipulates that bureaucrats are not required to fulfill records requests that necessitate compiling information or creating a new record.

That is what Geauga County’s Kathryn Huwig, a critic of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s pandemic policies, effectively asked workers to do in her 2023 request. Because employees would need to export data from two state databases into an Excel spreadsheet, the court ruled that they were correct in not handing over the public data.

“Reprogramming a computer’s software to extract certain information from an existing public record and then compiling that information into a new file creates a new record to the same extent that combing through an existing public record and copying the relevant information by hand onto a steno pad would,” the court ruled in a per curiam opinion joined by justices Patrick F. Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine, Joseph T. Deters and Daniel R. Hawkins. “But the Public Records Act does not impose such a duty on public-records custodians.

“The law does not require the department to create new records to respond to a public-records request,” the opinion added. “Writing a new query to extract certain information from existing digital records is legally no different from asking a custodian to comb through an existing record and handwrite certain information in a new document. Yet this is what Huwig expects the department to do to respond to her public-records request.”

However, the head of a non-partisan organization advocating for Ohioans’ right to choose or refuse medical treatments or procedures, such as vaccinations, said the ruling is a gift to Amy Acton, the state’s controversial former director of public health amid the pandemic and a 2026 gubernatorial candidate.

“Justice Pat DeWine should have recused himself from this case,” Stephanie Stock, president of Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, told Ohio.News. Pat DeWine is the son of Mike DeWine.

“His vote gave his father and DeWine appointee Dr. Acton political cover, and it tipped the scales against Ohio voters who deserve transparency and accountability from their executive branch,” Stock added. “This ruling will have far-reaching consequences across the state. This is not just about COVID data, this is about any citizen’s ability to make ANY public records request from ANY entity if they maintain the information in a database.”

In a partial dissent, Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy, joined by Justice Megan E. Shanahan, noted that the health department admitted it could export the data.

“The majority concludes that the department would have to create a new record to respond to Huwig’s public-records request,” they wrote. “However, as the majority itself recognizes, the department admits that it could provide the records Huwig requested by producing spreadsheets from its databases with the specific information Huwig seeks.

“And Huwig’s request that the public records be produced as electronic spreadsheets is no different than if she had asked for a printout of an electronic public record,” they added. “No one would suggest that if Huwig had asked for the latter that she would be seeking the creation of a new public record.”