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AUGUSTA, Maine — The Legislature’s watchdog committee cannot force the state to hand over confidential files from high-profile child death cases, Maine’s high court ruled Thursday.
The 26-page ruling from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ended a yearslong dispute between the administration of Gov. Janet Mills and the Government Oversight Committee, which has led the Legislature’s investigations of the embattled child welfare system.
It has been a major area of focus for Maine’s policymakers since two high-profile child deaths in 2018. A study found that Maine had the highest rate of child maltreatment among states in 2020. More than 100 child welfare workers called on Mills last week to replace their boss, ensuring that the subject area will be on the agenda again for lawmakers in 2025.
The legal dispute between lawmakers and the state goes back to the summer of 2022, when the state rejected the oversight committee’s subpoena for confidential files on four children who were under the age of 4 when they were killed by parents during the previous year.
The state argued that the oversight committee’s staff — not the lawmakers who direct them — could view the confidential files and said that releasing them could imperil prosecutions that were ongoing at the time but have since finished with guilty verdicts. Lawmakers sued, saying that ignoring their subpoena violates the constitutional separation of powers.
A lower-court judge sided with the state, prompting the legislative committee to appeal in 2023 to the high court. It upheld the ruling on slightly different grounds, citing legislative history and court precedent to argue that only legislative staff are allowed to see confidential material.
“Each entity is prescribed a distinct role, and their respective roles inform the nature and scope of access to confidential information and records such as those at issue here,” the court ruled.
