## Facts

- The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission adopted rules requiring hydraulic-fracturing operators to disclose chemical compounds used in fracturing fluids to the Commission.
- The rules contemplated that disclosures would be handled under the Wyoming Public Records Act (WPRA), which permits withholding “trade secrets” but does not define that term.
- Public-interest organizations requested the disclosed hydraulic-fracturing chemical information from the Commission under the WPRA.
- The Commission’s Supervisor produced some records but redacted certain chemical information after determining it qualified as “trade secrets.”
- Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., an intervenor, asserted that disclosure of specific chemical identities would enable competitors to reverse-engineer products and cause competitive harm.
- The requesters sought judicial review of the nondisclosure; the district court treated the matter as an administrative appeal and applied Wyoming Administrative Procedure Act (APA) review, affirming the redactions.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court erred by reviewing the records-denial decision under an APA administrative-review framework rather than using the WPRA’s procedures for resolving public-records disputes.
2. What definition of “trade secret” governs the WPRA exemption when the statute does not define the term, including whether a definition consistent with federal FOIA precedent applies.

## Decision

- The Wyoming Supreme Court reversed and remanded.
- The district court lacked authority to resolve the dispute through APA-style administrative review; the WPRA provides the controlling procedure and judicial-review framework for access-to-records disputes.
- For the WPRA “trade secret” exemption, the Court adopted the definition articulated in federal FOIA cases addressing confidential commercial information submitted to agencies.
- The Court did not decide whether the particular redacted chemical information met that standard, leaving application of the correct framework to the district court on remand.

## Legal Principles

- Disputes over access to state-agency records must be litigated under the WPRA’s procedures, not through APA administrative-appeal review, when the dispute concerns disclosure under the public-records statute.
- WPRA exemptions are construed within a statutory scheme that presumptively favors disclosure subject to limited, enumerated exceptions.
- When the WPRA exempts “trade secrets” without defining the term, courts apply a FOIA-informed trade-secret/confidential-commercial-information standard drawn from federal precedent.
- Under that FOIA-based approach, the confidentiality inquiry focuses on whether disclosure of commercial or financial information obtained from a private submitter is likely to cause substantial competitive harm.

## Conclusion

The Wyoming Supreme Court held that challenges to the Commission’s withholding of hydraulic-fracturing chemical disclosures must proceed under the WPRA rather than APA administrative review and that the WPRA “trade secret” exemption is defined by federal FOIA case law; the case was remanded for application of those standards to the requested records.


Powder River Basin Res. Council v. Wyo. Oil & Gas Conservation Comm'n, 2014 WY 37, 320 P.3d 222 (Wyo. 2014)