Interesting post by Karl Kurtz at the Thicket entitled Federal Court Rejects Texas Legislature’s Claim of Legislative Privilege. A federal court hearing a challenge to a Texas redistricting plan rejected the legislature’s claims of privilege with respect to internal documents.
The Justice Department and plaintiffs sought access to the documents prepared by legislators and legislative staff. The Legislature claimed that the documents were protected by legislative privilege and an attorney-client relationship between the staff of the Texas Legislative Council and the members of the Legislature.
Legislative privilege is the doctrine found in the federal Constitution and 43 state constitutions that provides legal protection to legislators in the conduct of legislative business. The intent is to shield them from threats of judicial or executive intervention in their work.
The Texas redistricting blog has more. Kurtz suggests that the case has more to do with Texas law than some kind of generally applicable trend. Additionally, the attorney-client argument apparently failed because the the staff in question weren’t lawyers. A key part of the discussion:
While Texas argues that the ‘statute provides strong evidence that the legislators believed their communications with [the Texas Legislative Council] to be protected by the attorney-client and legislative privileges,’ the statute says no such thing and the habits of the years do not transform ‘confidentiality’ to avoid public inquiry into ‘attorney- client privilege’ when demanded as part of litigation.
Just an item of which the Indiana General Assembly might want to be aware.
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