State Ex Rel. Blum v. Board of Education

Thirty years ago, the supreme court adopted a rule requiring custodians to give reasons for withholding government documents from public scrutiny. A police chief had refused an attorney's request for records of citations issued by a particular police officer, giving no reasons for that refusal. The court determined that the police chiefs failure to give specific reasons for refusing to release a public record required the release of that record whether or not adequate reasons might later be given:

No doubt a number of plausible and perhaps valid reasons for withholding these documents could…