State School Superintendent's text messages deleted, potential violation of Maryland law
The Maryland Public Information Act is a state law that gives the public access to public records. It allows taxpayers to see what the government is doing. Attorney Scott Marder believes what the Maryland State Department of Education is doing under Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury may violate this law.
“I will tell you that I am very concerned right now,” explained Marder.
Project Baltimore, last week, first reported on the existence of metadata for 98 text messages sent or received by Superintendent Choudhury from January to March of this year. The metadata was received through a public records request.
During that time frame, Fox45 News had exposed 23 schools in Baltimore City where zero students, who took the state test in 2022, scored proficient in math. Following Project Baltimore’s reporting, the state decided to change how it reports test scores to the public. The 98 text messages could give the public more insight into why its government made that decision. But it appears we’ll never know.
“I am concerned that this is a violation of state law,” said Marder.
In an email on Friday, MSDE told Project Baltimore, “The metadata of text messages provided is all that our Office of Information Technology could retrieve due to storage limitations.” In other words, the 98 text messages were deleted.
“The cell phone issued to Mohammed Choudhury by MSDE is a government cell phone that's supposed to be used for government business,” Marder told Project Baltimore. “I'm troubled by the fact that MSDE says that they had to delete (the texts) because of storage issues. I find that troubling.”
Project Baltimore originally filed the public record request on April 10. Metadata shows the final text message the Superintendent received related to the request was on March 22, just 19 days earlier. So, what MSDE is saying is that the cell phone issued to the State Superintendent doesn’t have the storage capacity to keep text messages for 19 days.”
“His cell phone should be more than sufficient to be able to keep a lot of text messages on there,” said Marder. “We deal with electronic discovery in cases all the time. And we see text messages going back many, many years on phones. That's very common.”
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According to state law, it’s a misdemeanor to willfully violate the Maryland Public Information Act, punishable by imprisonment up to 3 years, a fine up to $1,000 or both. The law clearly says a person cannot: “destroy, remove, or conceal a public record” and “the term ‘public record’ would also include, for instance, text messages and other electronic communications.”
Project Baltimore sent an email back to the state asking for the “specific storage limitations that prevented MSDE from retaining those text messages.” And for MSDE to “explain how your agency’s failure to retain these text messages complies with Maryland law.” A law designed to ensure public records are available to taxpayers.
“If someone willfully deletes a public record, it's a crime. And they can go to jail for up to three years, Marder told Project Baltimore. “So, it's a very serious violation of the law here in Maryland. If that was done.”
