Pennsylvania Justices Affirm Public Records Test of Online Posts

A dispute over whether school board members’ posts on their personal Facebook accounts fall under the state’s public records law requires a fact-specific inquiry, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said.

The law allows for the disclosure of all types of information, but whether a Facebook profile or page is considered a record of an agency under the statute requires a court to consider facts relevant “only to that particular form of communication, under those specific facts,” Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy wrote in a Tuesday opinion.

David Valesky, a member of the Penncrest school board, in 2021 reposted on his Facebook ...