March 30, 2012

Mr. Tyler F. Wallach

Assistant City Attorney

City of Fort Worth

1000 Throckmorton Street

Fort Worth, Texas 76102

OR2012-04649

Dear Mr. Wallach:

You ask whether certain information is subject to required public disclosure under the Public Information Act (the "Act"), chapter 552 of the Government Code. Your request was assigned ID# 449614 (Fort Worth PIR No. W014132).

The City of Fort Worth (the "city") received a request for a report of a specific incident. You state the city has redacted a driver's license number pursuant to section 552.130(c) of the Government Code. ⁽¹⁾ You claim that the remaining requested information is excepted from disclosure under section 552.101 of the Government Code. We have considered the exception you claim and reviewed the submitted information.

Section 552.101 of the Government Code excepts from disclosure "information considered to be confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision." Gov't Code § 552.101. Section 552.101 encompasses common-law privacy, which protects information that (1) contains highly intimate or embarrassing facts, the publication of which would be highly objectionable to a reasonable person, and (2) is not of legitimate concern to the public. See Indus. Found. v. Tex. Indus. Accident Bd., 540 S.W.2d 668, 685 (Tex. 1976). The types of information considered to be intimate and embarrassing by the Texas Supreme Court in Industrial Foundation include information relating to sexual assault, pregnancy, mental or physical abuse in the workplace, illegitimate children, psychiatric treatment of mental disorders, attempted suicide, and injuries to sexual organs. Id. at 683. Generally, only highly intimate or embarrassing information that implicates the privacy of an individual is withheld. However, in certain instances, where the requestor knows the identity of the individual at issue and the nature of certain incidents, the information must be withheld in its entirety to protect the individual's privacy.

Although you seek to withhold the submitted information in its entirety, you have not demonstrated, nor does it otherwise appear, that this is a situation where the submitted information must be withheld in its entirety on the basis of common-law privacy. However, upon review, we find the information you have highlighted is highly intimate or embarrassing and not of legitimate public concern. Thus, we determine the city must withhold the highlighted information under section 552.101 of the Government Code in conjunction with common-law privacy. The remaining information must be released.

This letter ruling is limited to the particular information at issue in this request and limited to the facts as presented to us; therefore, this ruling must not be relied upon as a previous determination regarding any other information or any other circumstances.

This ruling triggers important deadlines regarding the rights and responsibilities of the governmental body and of the requestor. For more information concerning those rights and responsibilities, please visit our website at http://www.oag.state.tx.us/open/index_orl.php, or call the Office of the Attorney General's Open Government Hotline, toll free, at (877) 673-6839. Questions concerning the allowable charges for providing public information under the Act must be directed to the Cost Rules Administrator of the Office of the Attorney General, toll free at (888) 672-6787.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey W. Giles

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

JWG/dls

Ref: ID# 449614

Enc. Submitted documents

c: Requestor

(w/o enclosures)

Footnotes

1. The Texas legislature amended section 552.130 effective September 1, 2011, to allow a governmental body to redact the information described in subsection 552.130(a)(1) without the necessity of seeking a decision from the attorney general. See Gov't Code § 552.130(c). If a governmental body redacts such information, it must notify the requestor in accordance with section 552.130(e). See id. § 552.130(d), (e).

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