Messages in which board members discuss school district business are public records.

A decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court should serve as a reminder that eMail correspondence through school-issued accounts is not private, though critics of the ruling fear it could result in a substantial cost to local districts.

Pennsylvania residents can read the eMail messages of elected officials under a decision in favor of a local newspaper, the Morning Call, recently upheld by the state Supreme Court.

In January, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ordered Easton Area School District to turn over a month’s worth of eMail messages to and from the official eMail addresses of school board members, the superintendent, and the district’s general eMail address.

The court found that eMails to and from individual members of the school board are records of the school district’s activities under the state’s Right to Know Law. The state Supreme Court’s decision last week not to reconsider the case means that the Commonwealth Court opinion will apply to similar cases in the future.

Attorneys for the Morning Call and Pennsylvania Newspaper Association called the decision a victory for the right to access government records under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law.

“In the media law community, this is thought of as one of the more important decisions that has come down in the last year,” said attorney Michael Baughman, who represented the newspaper.

But Easton Area School District solicitor John Freund said the case imposes an unfunded mandate on school districts and other public agencies, forcing them to cover the cost of combing through records to identify and black out information that is not public.

“They’re going to have to spend the time … to ensure that what is appropriate to release is released and what is inappropriate to release remains confidential,” Freund said.

In the case of the Morning Call’s request, that means redacting students’ names, addresses, and federally protected information from about 4,000 eMail messages, he said.

Former Morning Call reporter Christopher Baxter in 2010 requested all eMails sent and received between Oct. 1 and Oct. 31 for the nine school board members, Superintendent Susan McGinley, and a general district mailbox.