The San Antonio Express-News reports a Bexar County district judge ordered Tommy Adkisson to release the emails.

… but the legal battle is far from over.

Adkisson won’t turn over the emails while he appeals the ruling to a higher court in Austin. If he loses there, Adkisson said he would ask the Texas Supreme Court to review it.

The previous story, advancing the fact the case was going before the judge for a hearing, mentioned Adkisson had already spent $25,000 of his own money in the legal battle, trying to keep the records secret. In addition, this recent judge’s order “awarded more than $10,000 in attorney’s fees” to the Texas Attorney General’s office, the defendant in Adkisson’s case. If he actually takes the case to the Supreme Court successfully, his bill will increase exponentially.

Why does he want to do this? What’s in those emails that’s so important to keep secret?

The story seems to suggest Adkisson is fighting the open records law on philosophical grounds, but I find that hard to  believe. The article also notes the Texas Supreme Court “hasn’t been particularly favorable to the AG in its recent open-records decisions.” I’ll be watching what happens with interest.

The Associated Press reports the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today will hear oral arguments in a suit that challenges the open meetings act.

The 2009 suit, filed by 15 city leaders from around Texas, contends the act violates elected officials’ free speech rights by preventing them from speaking in public or private on issues facing their constituents.

The office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says the law prevents government by secret.

The suit is before the appeals court after a West Texas federal judge last year ruled the law doesn’t muzzle the First Amendment right to free speech.

A blog post by Austin lawyer James R. Bailey explains more about the plaintiffs’ legal arguments before the 5th Circuit:

Several members of city councils of various Texas cities have sued the Texas Attorney General alleging that TOMA violates the First Amendment because it limits their ability to speak freely and openly about public business. Essentially, they argue that because of the threat of criminal penalties, the council members are restrained from speaking about public business outside of a meeting of the governmental body, and that imposes an unconstitutional prior restraint on their First Amendment rights.

About a year ago, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote a blog post about the March 2011 federal appeals court ruling in the case. That court ruled the open meetings act “does not violate the constitutional free speech rights of city officials by requiring them to conduct meetings in public.”

I’m hoping the 5th Circuit upholds the lower appeals court’s opinion! As a journalist it’s invaluable to have access to politicians’ robust debate about the public’s business.

Now here’s what’s happening:

Adkisson has sued Abbott over his opinion that under the Texas Public Information Act, the commissioner must release emails from his personal accounts in which he conducted official business. Adkisson disagrees and will argue his case this week in Travis County district court. …

The attorney general has said the Public Information Act cannot be circumvented “by conducting official public business in a private medium,” but the issue appears to be largely uncharted territory for Texas courts. …

[Adkisson] is challenging the applicability of the state’s open records law and maintains that, even as a public official, he has a right to privacy. In court documents, Adkisson asserts that “the Commissioner’s privately held email is not ‘public information.’” …

In his motion for summary judgment, Adkisson argues that the state’s open records law does not apply to the privately held email of government officials; that Bexar County does not have access to his privately held email; and that since he’s an official, not a “governmental body,” the law does not apply. …

“I think that my AOL account is confidential and I think it’s protected by the open records act,” Adkisson said in an interview. “If you compare what the attorney general says — which is his own revision of the statue, which is impermissible — he says information is within the scope of the act if it relates to the official business of a governmental body and is maintained by a public official or employee of the governmental body. That’s a complete and utter misinterpretation of the law, and I can’t imagine how that’s not intentional. But I’d like to afford him the benefit of simply being mistaken.”

The Express-News has intervened in the suit, arguing Adkisson must release the emails.

I’ve made open records requests and received emails from officials’ personal email accounts. I’ve read news articles about other journalists’ battles, resulting in them winning access to records pertaining to public business from officials’ personal email accounts. Nevertheless, this story indicates there are few actual court opinions on the subject. I agree with the Attorney General’s conclusion that “the Public Information Act cannot be circumvented ‘by conducting official public business in a private medium.’”

In September 2011 when Ray Bonilla became general counsel of The Texas A&M University System, the Aggies had already decided to leave the Big 12 Conference for the Southeastern Conference.

Since then, one of Bonilla’s major roles has been negotiating the financial terms of the withdrawal from the Big 12 by Texas A&M University, the system’s flagship university in College Station.

“I’m optimistic we will reach settlement soon and that issue will be off my plate,” says Bonilla, but he notes it’s difficult to predict because the Big 12 and its members must all weigh in.

Read more online or in PDF format.

Family lawyers are used to dealing with highly charged disputes. But now some are escalating their own fight.

The State Bar of Texas Family Law Section wants to put the brakes on draft forms for pro se divorce litigants and is calling for the State Bar to rein in the Texas Access to Justice Commission (TAJC). With both sides claiming to speak in the interests of litigants — and rumblings about protecting lawyers’ livelihoods — the Texas Supreme Court will have to take sides.

In one corner are the TAJC and the high court’s Uniform Forms Task Force, which believe the forms will help people — especially low-income individuals who cannot afford lawyers — obtain divorces on their own. The forms will be a better tool for people who already use forms from the Internet and elsewhere, they say.

In the other corner are the Family Law Section and the Texas Family Law Foundation, which oppose the forms and claim their use: could hurt the interests of people who use them to file for divorce; will not be limited to low-income Texans; could harm the livelihoods of solos and small-firm family lawyers; and may expand into other practice areas besides family law.

Read more online or read a PDF.

When lawyers in the Lone Star State open the Texas Bar Journal this month, they’ll see an advertisement warning them it’s now “more dicey to chase ambulances.” Edwards Law Firm founder William R. “Bill” Edwards Sr. says he’s seen another Corpus Christi lawyer’s television commercial about the new law.

Read more online, or in PDF format.

An attorney for the Auburn, California, man said his client was in Miami on July 25 to shoot a video for Cisco Systems at the New World Tower and is the victim of a vindictive security officer who contacted the Israeli consulate and said Rolland told him, “Listen, I’m going to blow up the building tomorrow.”

Rhodes had sought to get Courreges disqualified, or for Courreges’ votes from Austin to be thrown out, but a TYLA nominations appeals committee on April 28 rejected that proposal. Voting in the election ends at 5 p.m. on May 2.

According to e-mails and documents Texas Lawyer obtained from the State Bar of Texas after an open records request, since the end of March there have been hundreds of back-and-forth e-mails in the TYLA president-elect race, most of them from Rhodes, alleging violations of election rules found in the TYLA Policy Manual.

Some of those unaffiliated with either campaign who have become embroiled in the controversy say TYLA’s election rules violate their right to free speech. The brouhaha also raises questions about how TYLA election rules address the use of Facebook and other social media sites. Courreges argues the TYLA Policy Manual does not include a Facebook rule.

Read more online, or download a PDF version.

Read more online, or in PDF format.