You ask for records, and what comes back includes something it shouldn’t — another owner’s account details, a delinquency list with names, an employee’s personal information, someone’s medical note attached to an accommodation request. It’s tempting to think, “they sent it to me, so it’s fair game.” It isn’t — for their sake, and for yours.
The law expects that information to be protected
The records statutes let an association withhold or redact the parts of a record that relate to an individual’s personal, health, or financial information, and records about an employee’s job performance or specific complaints. When that information reaches you unredacted, it means the association failed to do its job — it does not mean the information became yours to use however you like.
Why you don’t publish or spread it
- It’s not your privacy to give away. The other residents and employees never consented, and exposing their information can genuinely harm them.
- It can expose you. Publishing or circulating someone else’s private information can create your own legal liability — invasion of privacy and related claims — regardless of how you got it.
- It hands the other side a story. In a dispute, the person who mishandled sensitive information becomes the issue. Don’t trade your credibility for a moment of leverage.
- Your fight is about accountability, not exposure. Airing a neighbor’s private data proves nothing about the board’s conduct — it just makes you part of the problem.
What to do instead
- Keep your copy private and secure. Don’t post it online, don’t share it around the community, don’t use it to embarrass anyone.
- Flag the failure — in writing. That the association produced protected information unredacted is itself a governance and compliance concern you can raise (calmly, as a question): it shows the records process isn’t being handled properly.
- Redact before you use it. If a document is genuinely relevant to your own matter — a complaint, a petition, or anything you’d share — black out other people’s private information yourself first. Use only what’s necessary to make your point.
- Focus on the conduct, not the person. The board’s decisions and spending are fair game; a neighbor’s private details are not.
The bottom line
Handle other people’s information the way you’d want yours handled. Holding an HOA accountable and respecting your neighbors’ privacy aren’t in tension — doing the second is part of doing the first credibly. Keep it, don’t publish it, redact it if you must use it, and let the board’s failure to protect it be one more thing you can point to about how the community is being run. And keep your own records secure and private, too.