Gonzalez v. Miller, 2024 WL 4536191 (Ga., 2024)
Miller filed a verified complaint on June 7, 2023, seeking to compel Gonzalez to produce the previously requested public records maintained by the district attorney’s office and to obtain other remedies available under the ORA. He also alleged that Gonzalez directed at least one of her employees to delete or destroy correspondence between Gonzalez and an assistant district attorney. Miller filed the complaint against Gonzalez (a) in her official capacity as district attorney and ORA custodian for the district attorney’s office based on her alleged failure to timely produce or to permit the inspection of the requested public records, and (b) in both her individual and official capacities based on the alleged knowing and willful destruction of correspondence he contends constitutes a public record. The “district attorney’s office” is not named separately as a party to Miller’s complaint.
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(a) The ORA applies to public records maintained by district attorneys’ offices. . . . Therefore, because the Office of the District Attorney for the Western Judicial Circuit satisfies the ORA’s definition of “agency,” the District Attorney’s Office is subject to the ORA. See OCGA § 50-14-1 (a) (1) (A).
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Gonzalez contends, however, that the ORA applies only to offices within the executive branch of government, relying on two decisions handed down from this Court in the 1970s, Harrison Co. v. Code Revision Comm., 244 Ga. 325, 260 S.E.2d 30 (1979), and Coggin v. Davey, 233 Ga. 407, 211 S.E.2d 708 (1975).
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Although the constitution does not expressly state that district attorneys exercise executive power, that conclusion is inescapable for the following reasons. . . . Thus, we reject Gonzalez’s argument that the ORA does not apply to her office simply because our state constitution provides for district attorneys in Article VI.
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4. Immunity. Gonzalez argues that she has absolute prosecutorial immunity from civil liability for private actions arising from the performance of her official duties as District Attorney, including actions taken pursuant to the ORA. Although Gonzalez correctly asserts that Miller’s claims in this enforcement action “necessarily relate directly to the District Attorney’s activities in her official capacity,” prosecutorial immunity does not bar Miller’s claims against Gonzalez in her official capacity because official-capacity claims are claims against the agency, and the agency’s sovereign immunity has been waived by the ORA. As explained below, a district attorney’s prosecutorial immunity applies only to individual-capacity claims.18
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The Georgia Constitution provides that “[d]istrict attorneys shall enjoy immunity from private suit for actions arising from the performance of their duties[,]” Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. VI, Sec. VIII, Par. I (e). This constitutional immunity is available as a defense against Miller’s individual-capacity claims to the extent that those claims pertain to actions arising from the performance of Gonzalez’s duties as district attorney.20 In this case, however, the trial court did not address whether prosecutorial immunity barred any of Miller’s individual-capacity claims against Gonzalez, nor has Gonzalez made any argument on appeal with respect to those claims. Therefore, we do not address the merits of those individual-capacity claims nor do we express any opinion as to their viability.
Judgment affirmed.
