Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court handed civil liberties advocates a victory, ruling that state police can't hide from the public its policy governing how it monitors social media.
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    HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state police can’t hide from the public its policy on how it monitors social media.

    All four Democratic justices supported the majority decision, which said the lower Commonwealth Court went beyond its authority in trying to give the state police another attempt to justify keeping details of the policy a secret.

    A panel of three Republican Commonwealth Court judges reversed the Office of Open Records’ ruling that the policy should be disclosed without redactions, saying in May 2018 that the state police investigations chief based his analysis about the risk of exposure on his own extensive experience.

    The majority decision issued Tuesday said Commonwealth Court should not have given the state police a new opportunity to lay out the supposed public safety risks.

    “If and when appellate review is allowed to serve as a reset button based upon a court’s ill-defined policy concerns, there is no limiting principle, and the judiciary’s claims to neutrality and ordered decision-making vanish,” Wecht wrote.

    In a dissent, Justice Sallie Mundy said the lower court identified a question of fact that was unresolved: “whether there was a connection between the text of the document and risks articulated in the agency’s affidavit” about public safety.

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