Bill moves forward to shield Louisiana records from out-of-state residents

BATON ROUGE (WVUE) – A bill moving through the legislature would prevent non-Louisiana residents from requesting public records in the state.

Senate Bill 423 by Monroe Republican Senator Jay Morris, as it is written, would shield all records in Louisiana from being requested by non-residents.

An out-of-state resident who said she struggled to get a copy of her police report had a warning for Louisiana residents: be aware of what’s happening at the state capitol.

“It was pretty awful,” said Samantha Brennan of her experience dealing with records in Louisiana.

Brennan was a student at LSU who worked part-time in the football recruiting office.

She said one of the star players on the team took a partially nude photo of her without consent and shared it around the team.

She filed a report with campus police, and later moved out of state. Brennan said, after reading allegations from other women against the same individual, she decided to come forward, but had difficulty accessing her report.

“I called, spoke with [the woman]. She asked me for my name, my birthday and my social security card and said, ‘I’m having trouble finding it,’” Brennan said. “Then I knew I had a problem. This is a red flag.”

LSU didn’t budge on releasing the report.

“We had to sue for my police report,” Brennan said.

After a lawsuit was filed, and Brennan spoke in front of the legislature, the university released the report to her and apologized.

“Without that police report, I don’t really have any for sure credibility behind what I was trying to bring to the table,” Brennan said.

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First Amendment attorney Scott Sternberg said it is vital to allow out-of-state residents to view and receive public records from Louisiana in some circumstances.

“I think it would really be an injustice if those folks out of state couldn’t access those vital records, and I know that’s going to get fixed,” Sternberg said.

Sternberg said he’s confident Morris’ bill will be amended prior to final passage.

Morris, appearing in a Senate committee on Wednesday, defended moving the bill forward with the same rationale used by Governor Jeff Landry to defend other public records bills.

“Agencies are often harassed with multiple requests. My understanding is often they are even automatically generated,” he told senators. “Public records requests have become an industry.”

Morris, and Landry, are referring to out-of-state actors who may submit requests as a tactic to create a heavier workload.

“No matter what anybody says on the radio or on television, the bad actors here are not the reporters,” Sternberg said. “They’re people who are loading them up with public records requests, they’re usually PACs, political operations.”

Morris’ bill was reported favorably out of the committee, but with a draft amendment to allow out-of-state requesters access to “readily available” records.

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