The Georgia Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision this week, solidifying access to documents held by private contractors working for public agencies.
The decision followed a case involving an individual who sought records related to a professor at Georgia Tech.
Ryan Milliron submitted an Open Records Act request to Manos Antonakakis, a professor at Georgia Tech, seeking records pertaining to Antonakakis’s work with Georgia Tech as a private contractor. The request was sent to Antonakakis and Georgia Tech as a public institution. Antonakakis did not respond to the request, though Georgia Tech responded with limited documentation. Milliron sued Antonakakis over his lack of response because Milliron believed that Antonakakis, who worked as a private contractor, had additional records pertaining to his request. Specifically, Milliron alleged that Antonakakis’s companies, which were established as a flow-through to receive DARPA funding for Georgia Tech, had the documents he sought.
Milliron’s complaint was dismissed at the trial court level in November 2022, ruling that public agencies were required to produce public records under the Georgia Open Records Act, but that individual employees and contractors were not. The same trial court also determined that Milliron improperly filed his request with Antonakakis because Georgia Tech had an open records officer it designated for handling requests.
Antonakakis specifically argued that:
- (he was not an “agency” subject to production under the Open Records Act;
- while agency employees may individually possess public records, agency employees do not have to personally respond to public records requests;
- agencies are the only proper party for producing public records, even when a private person possesses such records;
- Milliron’s complaint was moot because he submitted the same open records request to Georgia Tech—the “responsible state agency”— and Georgia Tech “communicated and worked with” Antonakakis to “identify, collect, and produce responsive records” in full as required under the Open Records Act; and
- Milliron did not allege that Georgia Tech “improperly redacted or omitted any documents from that production.”
Milliron appealed and the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld the decision, siding with Antonakakis and Georgia Tech.
This week, however, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned that ruling. In a unanimous decision, justices concluded that the Open Records Act applies to records held by private contractors performing services for public agencies, which is outlined in the Georgia Open Records Act itself.
From the ruling:
“As the plain language of the statute makes clear, records prepared or maintained by a private contractor “in the performance of a service or function for or on behalf of an agency” are “public records” under the Act, and this is so even if the private contractor separately works as an employee of an agency. OCGA § 50-18-70 (b) (2)”
Justices also wrote:
“[A]s we have said many times before when interpreting legal text, we do not read words in isolation, but rather in . . . the context of the [statute] as a whole…In enacting the Open Records Act, the General Assembly declared that the strong public policy of this state is in favor of open government; that open government is essential to a free, open, and democratic society; and that public access to public records should be encouraged to foster confidence in government and so that the public can evaluate the expenditure of public funds and the efficient and proper functioning of its institutions.
The General Assembly further stated that “there is a strong presumption that public records should be made available for public inspection without delay,” and that “[t]his article shall be broadly construed to allow the inspection of governmental records.”
The Court also determined that requests for records can be made directly to the custodian of the records, even if that person is a private contractor and even if the agency has a designated open records officer.
The Court reversed the Court of Appeals’ decision and remanded the case for further proceedings to determine what records Antonakakis may hold and whether they are public records under the Act.
