(June 2003) A recent ruling from the Court of Special Appeals halts our suit against the Maryland Police Training Commission for its failure to provide public documents as required by law. At issue is the public's right to know who is implementing policy, state officials or anti-gun advocacy groups.

Background. As you know, Parris Glendening's 2000 Gun Safety Act bans sale of a handgun to anyone unable to show he satisfied a so-called 'training requirement.' Basically most buyers must take a state-run class about safety. Once Glendening won the restriction his administration missed deadlines for developing the class. The only way to buy a handgun would be to take a class the state wouldn't offer. Only after we filed suit to make the state follow its own law did the Police Training Commission (PTC) start work on its present videotape class.

Present case. While pressing our litigation demanding the course, we discovered reference to materials which the state should have given to us during our Public Information Act research. This is what the recent ruling concerns. The documents we sought unsuccessfully would show how strongly the state's training course had its roots at the Violence Policy Center, an anti-gun advocacy group. If the administration gave anti-gun lobbyists free access to all handgun buyers then what clues would reveal it? Things like correspondence exchanged with the VPC, and the earliest curriculum drafts - exactly the documents denied to us. We know they possessed these materials - state employees testified to this under oath. The state later changed its position, variously saying it really didn't have these documents after all or that too much time had passed since our request so the documents had been destroyed.

Is Maryland's gun class based on propaganda from anti-gun advocacy groups? Clearly yes - in fact they're cited in the tape. But PTC officials stopped the world from discovering just how cozy a relationship they enjoy with the VPC and other gun-banning groups, so all that was left for a jury to determine was whether state officials withheld documents "willfully." If so they could be held responsible for it in their job.

The odds of this question reaching a jury look slim. A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge granted the state's petition for dismissal, and recently the Court of Special Appeals sustained his ruling. If Maryland's highest court does not grant our anticipated request for consideration of the serious constitutional issues we raise, then no jury will ever review the PTC's pattern of inconsistent statements, evaluate the suspicious circumstances of just these documents being the ones withheld, or look PTC officials in the eye to judge whether they tell the truth. How does a question of willful denial of information ever reach a trier of fact under conditions set forth by the administration? We're plowing fresh ground, since this question has never been explored in the courts. We hope it will be our case that the Court of Appeals accepts as the basis for interpreting the statute on public information.

Bottom line: The present situation frees state employees to work for anti-gun advocacy groups, knowing the equally anti-gun Attorney General's office will aggressively protect them from exposure. Citizens must pay legal and court fees to demand documents due us under law but which officials can withhold anyway. All because there is now no apparent way to trigger the Public Information Act's penalty for willfully withholding records.