E-mails get school district in legal bind

The Clark County School District has got e-mail controversies in its in-basket.

The district is fending off a lawsuit to make a year's worth of e-mail records of School Board members available to a public watchdog without charge.

Superintendent Walt Rulffes also is accused of using district e-mail to inappropriately promote political activism and criticize Gov. Jim Gibbons' budget proposal "as painfully regressive and destructive."

School district lawyer Bill Hoffman said outside of District Court on Friday that Chip Mosher, the high school teacher who criticized Rulffes' e-mail in a column for the City Life alternative weekly, misunderstood Rulffes' message. City Life is published by the same company that operates the Review-Journal.

Michael Rodriguez, a spokesman for the district, said the superintendent was only encouraging employees to become involved in the shaping of the state budget and was careful to tell employees to contact their legislators outside of work.

Mosher said it was hypocritical to suggest one thing and do another, since he got Rulffes' e-mail during work. He said the e-mail was "an insult" to his many conservative colleagues who voted for the governor.

Maggie McLetchie, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said Mosher's criticism is a good example of how the district applies policies to suit its own purposes.

The ACLU is representing Karen Gray in her request for a year's worth of School Board members' e-mails. District Judge Susan Johnson has ruled that the district cannot charge Gray for editing the e-mails for confidentiality before releasing them to her.

Hoffman argued in court Friday that the district should still be able to charge for retrieving the information.

He also tried to cast doubt on whether many of the e-mails could be released as public records. To be public records, Hoffman said, they should pertain to official business and not merely be social messages such as, "Do you want to meet for lunch?"

Lee Rowland, an ACLU attorney, said it was not up to the school district to determine what is relevant to the public.

"Who's meeting who for lunch tells you a lot about how policy is made," Rowland said.

Johnson, who did not make a ruling Friday, indirectly suggested in court that the case probably would be decided on appeal by the state Supreme Court.

"There are seven wise men who will want to hear this," Johnson said.

Contact reporter James Haug at jhaug @reviewjournal.com or 702-799-2922.