"A state judge has ruled that thousands of documents related to security during the construction in North Dakota of the heavily protested Dakota Access Pipeline are public and subject to the state's open records law.

The Friday ruling by South Central District Judge Cynthia Feland is a victory for The Intercept news organization, which sued in November 2020 to get access to the documents for investigative journalism on the topics of "environmental justice, the treatment of Indigenous peoples and workers, and government efforts to suppress First Amendment-protected activities."

North Dakota Newspaper Association attorney Jack McDonald said the ruling also is "a good decision for government transparency" and has wider ramifications.

"It establishes clearly that records in possession of a public entity are public records -- absent any specific exemptions -- even if the person submitting those records didn’t intend them to be," he said. "It also establishes that agreements between companies about nondisclosure are only good between those companies, and does not affect those records once in the public domain.""

Blake Nicholson reports for the Bismarck Tribune January 4, 2022. [2]