"[T]he public has a legitimate interest in knowing the underlying basis for a disciplinary charge against a [public agency employee] who has been charged with misconduct" even where some of the "allegations of misconduct by are of a personal nature" and even where a decision is made to take no action against the employee.
Palmer v Driggers https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ky-court-of-appeals/1125917.html
Jared Bennett reports for the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting:
"In 2017, Tracy Dotson, then-president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 77 representing correctional officers at the Louisville jail, spread a salacious rumor.
"Dotson told fellow FOP leaders attending a conference in Madisonville that he'd seen a video of a female union member having sex on a desk at the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections training facility, according to disciplinary records.
"An investigation found no evidence such a video existed and, in sworn interviews with the jail's investigators, Dotson walked back his claims. The video was just one of the many rumors floating around the jail, he said. In a letter summarizing the investigation, jail director Mark Bolton said Dotson characterized his claim to have personally seen the video as 'simply drunk talk.'
"Bolton considered spreading the rumor a significant act of misconduct.
'Making a false statement of sexual misconduct creates a victim, it does damage to a person's reputation,' Bolton wrote.
"Dotson wasn't disciplined, but the letter was placed in Dotson's file, where it sits alongside more than two dozen notices of discipline since his first stint as a jail guard in 2000.
While some of the disciplinary notices pertain to minor violations, they also include accusations of harassing coworkers, using unnecessary force against people held in the Louisville jail, antagonizing people housed in the detox unit and lying to investigators.
"By 2019, when a colleague alleged in a lawsuit against the jail, the union and Metro government that Dotson was allowed to sexually harass her, Dotson had escaped firing three times.
"Dotson told KyCIR this incident, like many others in his file, is an example of the jail management using disciplinary actions to retaliate against him for his union activity."
