Commissioner of Public Health v. Freedom of Information Commission

Summary

The court held that federal law barred disclosure under Connecticut's Freedom of Information Act of records received from either the Practitioner Data Bank or the Healthcare Data Bank. The confidentiality provisions permit disclosure of independently obtained information from the agency's own files when otherwise required by state law, but not disclosure of the data-bank reports themselves. The court treated later regulatory amendments as clarifying existing law rather than changing it, reversed the judgment concerning the department's appeal, and remanded for judgment sustaining that appeal.