Sec. 1. A fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government is that government is the servant of the people and not their master. Accordingly, it is the public policy of the state that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and employees. Providing persons with the information is an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties of public officials and employees, whose duty it is to provide the information. This chapter shall be liberally construed to implement this policy and place the burden of proof for the nondisclosure of a public record on the public agency that would deny access to the record and not on the person seeking to inspect and copy the record.
Ind. Code § 5-14-3-1
Public policy; construction; burden of proof for nondisclosure
Applied in 25 court decisions — leading case City of Elkhart v. Agenda: Open Government, Inc. (1997)
Most recently applied in Kenneth Todd Scales v. Warrick County Sheriff's Department (April 2019)
As added by P.L.19-1983, SEC.6
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Indiana General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Indiana statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.