'The Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet has been ordered to release e-mails to a man who wants to see messages between his wife and a male co-worker at a state office. The Kentucky Office of the Attorney General had refused to release the email exchanges on the basis they were exempt from public disclosure due to a personal privacy exception to the statute.
The wife had admitted to having an affair however her husband wants to see the messages that she and the co-worker exchanged. Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip J. Shepherd ordered the messages released writing in his opinion, “In this case, the communications are by definition non-work-related, but that does not mean there is no public interest in the disclosure of such e-mails. The fact that state employees are using state resources to exchange non-work-related messages during working hours is a matter of legitimate inquiry for the public.”
Once again this should remind everyone that your office emails are not private even if you are a state employee.