Race Data From Traffic Stops by State Police, Other Departments Won’t Be Available Under PA’s Public Records Law
By: Katie Meyer
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is expected to sign a bill requiring Pennsylvania State Police and numerous law enforcement agencies to collect detailed data on drivers stopped during traffic incidents, including their race or ethnicity. Despite this transparency initiative, the bill also excludes this data from the Right-to-Know Law, raising concerns among advocates like Craig Staudenmaier, an attorney at Cohen Seglias specializing in Pennsylvania’s public information law, who questions why such information shouldn’t be publicly accessible. Staudenmaier emphasized, “You should be allowed to get it and look at it and draw your own conclusions, and not have to have them spoon-feed you.”
HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro is poised to sign a bill that requires Pennsylvania State Police and many other law enforcement agencies to collect data on drivers pulled over during traffic stops, including their race or ethnicity.
But the bill also exempts those data from the state’s Right-to-Know Law, filtering it instead through State Police or a third party — a concern to public information advocates.
“I’d like someone to explain to me why the data should not be subject to the Right-to-Know Law,” said Craig Staudenmaier, an attorney with Cohen Seglias who specializes in Pennsylvania’s public information law. “It seems like, you know, there’s a purpose behind the gathering of the data. Therefore, why shouldn’t that be publicly available?”
