2024-03-19 05:16:14
photo by: W.Va. Legislative Photography
The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals chamber is seen in Charleston.
CHARLESTON — A lower court erred in taking the word of the state Tax Division that it didn’t have to comply with a public documents request, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled Monday morning.
The Supreme Court issued an opinion reversing and returning a lawsuit to Kanawha County Circuit Court that was filed by Virginia-based Tax Analysts against the state Tax Division in March 2022. Chief Justice Tim Armstead penned the opinion on behalf of the five-member court.
Tax Analysts is a nonprofit organization that publishes information about federal, state and local tax issues. In July 2021, Tax Analysts filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Tax Division, formerly called the State Tax Department, seeking copies of field audit manuals, training information and continuing education materials.
The Tax Division rejected the FOIA request, citing state code that exempts the disclosure closure of standards used “… for the selection of (tax) returns for examination or data used or to be used for determining such standards.” According to the Tax Division, the disclosure of the requested documents could be used to help taxpayers evade West Virginia’s laws.
In the complaint against the Tax Division filed in Kanawha County, attorneys for Tax Analysts sought a declaration from the judge that the division improperly withheld the requested information and sought a permanent injunction. Instead, the division filed a motion to dismiss the case, which was granted by the court. Tax Analysts appealed the ruling.
In his written opinion, Armstead said the circuit court should have required the Tax Division to justify why the documents being requested were exempt from FOIA.
“Without requiring the (Tax Division) to justify or establish the applicability of the statutory exemption as it relates to the documents or information contained within them, the circuit court accepted the Department’s position that disclosure was not required,” Armstead wrote. “…We find that the circuit court erred by granting the (division’s) motion to dismiss without requiring the (division) to follow the established procedure to determine whether the documents, or portions of the documents, were subject to disclosure.”
Armstead and the high court said the Kanawha County Circuit Court should have required the Tax Division produce a Vaughn Index, a document used in FOIA court cases that includes the list of requested documents and why each document should be exempted from disclosure. Armstead said the lower court also should have required an affidavit from the Tax Division explaining its objections.
“At the initial pleadings stage of a FOIA dispute, the disputed materials are generally unknown to both the court and the opposing party,” Armstead wrote. “This fact renders dismissal of an action challenging refusal to disclose requested documents … disfavored except in limited circumstances.”
“Here, where the requested documents were not disclosed, it is impossible to determine if the manuals and other materials requested by Tax Analysts fall squarely within the … exemption provision,” Armstead continued. “Absent additional information, the circuit court could not determine whether disclosure of the requested documents would reveal exempted information.”
According to Armstead, any time a FOIA request is denied, it should be done in the most narrow circumstances, with the goal of providing as much publicly available information as legally possible. Instead, Armstead said the circuit court’s ruling provided a wide open interpretation for the Tax Division to ignore FOIA requests.
“Instead of justifying its refusal to disclose the requested documents through submission of a Vaughn index, the (division) simply did not disclose any of the documents and claimed generally that they fit within the exemption,” Armstead said. “The (division) refused to provide the documents despite this Court’s disapproval of such generalized claims of exemption from disclosure.”
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