A requestor asked Fort Bend Independent School District for "detailed phone records, including, but not limited to, text messages, photo messages and inbound and outbound calls" on any device on which district business is conducted, for named representatives, "redacted to exclude personal phone calls and any other information made confidential under state law".¹ The district withheld the phone logs of its representatives' personal cell phones, sent a sample to the Attorney General, and requested a decision; the Attorney General's office responded that a governmental body may not circumvent the Public Information Act by conducting public business in a private medium, so to the extent the calls were made in connection with the district's public business the information is subject to the Act and must be released unless excepted.²

The district sued the Attorney General under Government Code section 552.324; the trial court signed a final judgment requiring disclosure and the Third Court of Appeals affirmed.¹ The district petitioned for review on September 27, 2023, and the Attorney General responded on January 30, 2024; the Court requested briefs on the merits on May 31, 2024, and the district and the Attorney General filed them on July 31 and October 9, 2024, followed by the district's reply on November 14, 2024 (Docket). The Court denied the petition on January 31, 2025, and the district moved for rehearing on March 26, 2025; the Court denied rehearing on September 19, 2025, and Justice Young filed an opinion concurring in the denial.²

Petition for review from the Third Court of Appeals in a Public Information Act suit against the Attorney General; the petition was denied on January 31, 2025, and rehearing was denied on September 19, 2025, with a concurrence in the denial of rehearing.³

The district presents whether the court of appeals nullified part of the Act by stretching "produce" beyond its ordinary usage, whether its decision compels the district to violate the federal Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act and the Fourth Amendment and its Texas counterpart, whether it conflicts with how federal and other states' open-records laws treat call logs, and whether it compels an unreasonable result.¹ The Attorney General states the question as whether, under the Act's plain language, information that the district's trustees and employees created while conducting official district business is public information.² The Court did not decide those questions, and the concurrence describes the district's arguments as including that the logs were "produced" by phone companies, not employees, and that disclosure would violate its representatives' constitutional privacy rights.³

Whether personal-phone call and text logs concerning district business are "public information."

Petitioner (Fort Bend ISD): The Attorney General ordered the district to collect and disclose private call and text logs created by third-party carriers; the court of appeals' reading contradicts the ordinary meaning of "produce," nullifies one of the Act's three definitions of public information, conflicts with this Court's precedent that information becomes public when used in connection with official business, and is at odds with federal and state privacy law.¹

Respondent (the Attorney General): The Act defines public information to include information produced by the district's trustees and employees while transacting official business, even if the district never used it, and information is produced in connection with official business if it is created by, transmitted to, or received by an officer or employee.²

The district argued that the case's simple, uncontested facts make it an ideal vehicle for the Court to address wide-ranging statewide issues, and that because administrative appeals under the Act are filed exclusively in Travis County, further percolation is unlikely.¹ Justice Young wrote that denying review expresses no view of the merits and that the Court will need to consider in an appropriate case how the Act applies to privately owned cell phones.²

• Texas Association of School Boards Legal Assistance Fund filed an amicus curiae brief on November 14, 2023, at the petition stage.
• Texas-American Federation of Teachers and the Texas State Employees Union filed an amicus curiae brief on November 15, 2024, and filed another amicus curiae brief on May 7, 2025, while rehearing was pending.

Reasoning

The Court denied rehearing without an opinion of the Court, and Justice Young concurred in the denial.¹ He wrote that governmental units cannot insulate themselves from the Act by requiring employees to conduct official business on personal devices, but that forcing employees to yield their own devices to invasive searches for public information commingled with private data implicates countervailing interests of possible constitutional dimension, including under the Fourth Amendment and article I, section 9 of the Texas Constitution.² He said the district's concerns warrant serious consideration, noting that its trustees are unpaid volunteers and that requiring public servants to give up digital privacy could deter public service, but he concluded that this case is not an ideal vehicle.³ The requestor asked that personal calls and confidential information be redacted, the Attorney General's ruling reaches only calls connected with public business, and the Act excepts confidential information, so the district need not disclose its representatives' personal information.⁴ He added that each employee has a duty to comply with the Act and is best placed to decide which calls were business-related, so the district need not search employees' phones, and that if a case arose in which the government required employees to waive their privacy in their own phones he would be inclined to grant review.⁵ He also observed that the concerns might be eased by providing employees the equipment they need, including cell phones, though allocating public resources is not the judiciary's role.⁶

Disposition

The Court denied the petition for review on January 31, 2025, and denied the district's motion for rehearing on September 19, 2025.⁷

Vote Breakdown

Justice Young filed an opinion concurring in the denial of the motion for rehearing.⁸