Nevada high court rejects petition from state retirement system
The Nevada Supreme Court denied a request to rehear a decision that compelled the state retirement system to disclose the benefits of employees in a high-profile public records case that began three years ago.
In a majority opinion on Monday, four justices rejected the petition from the Public Employees Retirement System, court records show. Two justices — James Hardesty and Lidia Stiglich — dissented, while Justice Ron Parraguirre recused himself.
The court in October ruled 4-3 in favor of the Nevada Policy Research Institute, which filed a public-records request in 2015 seeking retiree names, salaries, dates of retirement, years of service and cost-of-living increases so the information could be published on TransparentNevada.com.
The retirement system filed a petition on Nov. 6 for the court to rehear the case, arguing that the October opinion did not “provide adequate guidance” to public agencies when responding to public-records requests, court records show.
The petition also argued the recent opinion did not show a basis for treating some parts of a retiree’s file as confidential but not others.
The court’s majority opinion agreed with NPRI’s response to the petition. The response, filed Dec. 4, argued that a rehearing was “neither appropriate nor necessary” because the petition failed to meet the requirements for a rehearing.
The retirement system appealed after the research institute sued in District Court in July 2016, and won in 2017. The state had argued that the raw data included only redacted Social Security numbers, and that it had no duty to create a new document in order to satisfy the public-records request.
Chief Justice Michael Douglas wrote in the October majority opinion that “searching PERS’ electronic database for existing non-confidential information is not the creation of a new record.”
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.