{"id":64765,"date":"2026-09-07T11:18:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T16:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=64765"},"modified":"2026-09-07T11:18:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T16:18:24","slug":"fl2-no-4a-right-to-avoid-public-records-disclosure-after-suppression-of-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=64765","title":{"rendered":"FL2: No 4A right to avoid public records disclosure after suppression of search"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Florida has constitutional and statutory public records laws. A target of a search doesn\u2019t have a Fourth Amendment right to prevent public disclosure of the product of a search of his place and things even when the search was unlawful. Fla. Ctr. for Gov’t Accountability, Inc. v. Ziegler<\/a>, 2026 Fla. App. LEXIS 6756 (Fla. 2d DCA Sep. 2, 2026):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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There is no statutory exemption for public records that were allegedly obtained in violation of a person’s Fourth Amendment rights. Thus, there is no statutory authority to deem such records exempt from the Public Records Act. See Franks v. Davis, 145 So. 2d 228, 231 (Fla. 1962) (“Under established rules of construction, the specification of permissible exemptions will exclude others: expressio unius est exclusio alterius.”). Nor does the Fourth Amendment operate as a free-floating, unenacted public records exemption, a point we will explain next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we can’t be entirely certain if A.J. drew its holding’s demarcation beyond the “unique problem” of child abuse, we can say that the instances when a third party’s arguments to shield public records have been recognized are few and far between. See, e.g., Fla. Freedom Newspapers, Inc. v. McCrary, 520 So. 2d 32, 34 (Fla. 1988) (recognizing a criminal defendant’s objection and affirming court’s temporarily sealing pretrial discovery information from public release, remarking “[t]he notion that a defendant has no standing to assert a constitutional right to a fair trial through a motion to control prejudicial pretrial publicity is meritless”). No Florida court has ever held that a third party has standing to contest a public records request by virtue of a purported property right in their digital information that was allegedly obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. We are hesitant to be the first to do so. But assuming without deciding that the Zieglers could properly bring a lawsuit to challenge the release of public records held by SPD and the SAO, our holding does not change: because the copied data does not fall under any recognized statutory exemption under the Florida Public Records Act, and the Fourth Amendment does not provide a free-floating public records exception, we reject the Zieglers’ arguments on their merits.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida has constitutional and statutory public records laws. A target of a search doesn\u2019t have a Fourth Amendment right to prevent public disclosure of the product of a search of his place and things even when the search was unlawful. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-warrant-papers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64766,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64765\/revisions\/64766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}