So the Colorado Court of Appeals held yesterday in Brookhart v. Reaman, in an opinion by Judge Lino Lipinsky de Orlov, joined by Judge Timothy Schutz; note that the opinion applies Colorado state law, and the rules may differ from state to state.
Four individuals (the requesters) asked the Gunnison County Library District (the library district) to remove a book titled Gender Queer: A Memoir (the book) from the shelves of the Gunnison County Public Library (the library) or, alternatively, to prevent children from accessing it. The requesters used the library district's own "Request for Reconsideration of Materials" form (the reconsideration form) to submit their requests. The library makes the reconsideration form available to the public through its website. Any person may complete and submit a reconsideration form to the library district to ask that an item be removed from the library's collection or that access to the item be restricted.
Respondent, Mark Reaman, in his capacity as the editor of the Crested Butte News, submitted a request under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), to the library district to obtain unredacted copies of the requesters' reconsideration forms. The library district responded by filing this case in district court … to obtain guidance on how it should respond to Reaman's CORA request [as the statute allows]….
The narrow, but important, issue before us is whether the library district is required to keep the requesters' identifying information confidential under section 24-90-119(1), which prohibits the disclosure of "any record or other information that identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific materials or service or as otherwise having used the library." Section 24-72-204(3)(a)(VII) links section 24-90-119(1) to CORA, providing that a records custodian shall deny disclosure of "[l]ibrary records disclosing the identify of a user as prohibited by section 24-90-119." This case involves the apparent conflict between two principles embodied in the Colorado Revised Statutes: the mandate that "all public records … be open for inspection by any person at reasonable times," except as "specifically provided by law," § 24-72-201, and library users' right of privacy protected through section 24-90-119(1).
