The Arizona Legislature will exempt itself from state public records law and will delete all email correspondence sent or received by staff or lawmakers after 90 days.
That is under new rules adopted by the Republican majority over Democratic opposition.
The state Senate is set to exempt texts on personal phones from release at any time. Those personal phones are often used for legislative business.
If those rules had been in place after the 2020 election, the public would have been unaware of many of the efforts to persuade legislators to overturn President Joe Biden’s win.
Senate Republicans were forced to release thousands of emails and texts related to their partisan review of that election.
The proposal comes as the state Supreme Court ruled that some messages could remain secret, as it cited that lawmakers can discuss some issues privately.
