$4,000 Awarded to Ohio Prisoner for Denied Records Requests
by Chuck Sharman
A decision by the Supreme Court of Ohio on September 1, 2026, highlights the evolving landscape for state prisoners mounting mandamus actions to challenge public records requests that have been denied by the state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (DRC).
As PLN has reported, prisoners have taken advantage of the state’s Public Records Act (PRE), O.R.C. 149.43, to secure mandates from the Court awarding them statutory damages after their public records request were denied—in one case receiving awards in multiple actions that totaled $9,000. [See: PLN, Sep. 2024, p.60.]
In 2025, state lawmakers moved to shut down further litigation with an amendment to the law that inserted an additional step in the process—“a complaint, on a form prescribed by the clerk of the court of claims,” which the relator must serve on the public office, after which it has three business days “to cure or otherwise address the failure alleged in the complaint.” See: O.R.C. 149.43(C)(1), 2024 Sub.H.B. No. 265 (“H.B. 265”).
As a result, when prisoner Devin D. Howard filed a mandamus action challenging denial of requests for records from Lake Erie Correctional Institution, its Public Records Coordinator, Laura Sackett, responded first that he had failed to file the additional form required under the newly amended law.
That was where the Court began. Noting that the legislature signals its intent to make a law retroactive but did not do so in this amendment, the Court dismissed Sackett’s first objection because Howard filed his action two days before the amendment took effect. Even though he filed an amended complaint 29 days later, its operative date remained the same, the Court added. It then turned to each of Howard’s eight requests that were denied.
First, he requested staff schedules at the prison for a specific date, which Sackett denied, claiming an exemption to disclosure for “security records.” The Court agreed that staff schedules qualified for this exemption, even those from two years prior, as Howard had requested. He also asked to view mail from the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission that the prison mailroom had intercepted. Sackett called this an attempted end-run around the mailroom’s decision, but the Court said it didn’t need to adjudicate that—the requested record was federal, not one from Ohio, so it wasn’t covered by the PRA.
Howard also requested records showing “the business(es), company(s), or entity(s) which provide e-mail services” or “phone services” to the prison. Sackett denied the request as too broad or overly vague. The Court agreed, reasoning that what Howard asked her to do was to “search through another record to find information that the requester seeks and compile it into a new record”—a task beyond what the PRA requires, as held in State ex rel. Huwig v. Dep’t of Health, 180 Ohio St. 3d 569 (2025). For this same reason, Sackett’s denial of Howard’s request for definitions of terms found in DRC policy was also upheld.
His request for footage from guards’ body-worn cameras was properly denied under the exemption for security records, the Court said next. But the same was not true for his request for 15 minutes of footage from a stationary dayroom surveillance camera. Sackett said that the footage had been overwritten after 45 days. But Howard made his request the same day, when it still existed. Since she offered no other reason for withholding it, that meant the request was improperly denied.
The Court also refused to accept Sackett’s denial of Howard’s request for a copy of the “Request for Incoming Funds” form that prisoners must fill out before someone can send them money. She could have simply told him to get a copy from the library, but she didn’t. Instead, she said he “failed to identify” whether he wanted a blank form or a copy of one already submitted by another prisoner. The Court didn’t buy that attempted dodge, however, finding this denial was also improper.
Howard’s last request was for copies of emails between prison officials relating to “e-filing” with the Court. Sackett provided the copies, redacting the work telephone numbers and email addresses of the prison employees. She failed to provide any statutory or case-law authority for this decision, so the Court deemed this an improper denial, too.
Statutory damages for improperly denied requests accrue at the rate of $100 per day up to a maximum of $1,000. Since all Howard’s were denied for longer than 10 days, he was awarded $4,000—$1,000 for each of the four requests that were improperly denied. Howard, who proceeded pro se in his case, is to be commended for such an outstanding result. See: State ex rel. Howard v. Sackett, 2026-Ohio-3354.
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