According to a Texas attorney general’s opinion, the State Bar of Texas does not have to release most attorneys’ e-mail addresses in response to Public Information Act requests.
In August, the State Bar released the e-mail addresses of thousands of Texas lawyers to a member of the public who sued the Bar under the state’s Public Information Act (PIA). But in its Nov. 19 opinion, the Office of the Attorney General wrote that, to the extent that information at issue constitutes membership records that the State Bar maintains for the Texas Supreme Court, it is not subject to the PIA but is governed by Rule 12 of the Rules of Judicial Administration. “This office does not address questions under those rules,” Justin D. Gordon, an assistant attorney general in the OAG’s Open Records Division, wrote in OR2010-17528.
