Appeals Court rejects challenge to state auto-deleting chats

By George Erb, WashCOG secretary

Feb. 20, 2026 — The Washington state Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged the state’s automatic destruction of agency text messages after seven days.

A three-judge panel in Tacoma handed down its unanimous opinion in the case of Jamie Nixon v. the state of Washington, et al., only 20 days after hearing oral arguments.
Nixon sued the state in 2024, after learning that agencies were keeping internal messages on the shared Microsoft Teams platform for only seven days, after which they were deleted.
The auto deletions, Nixon contended, violated state retention laws and the Public Records Act, among other things. He also said the deletions compromised his constitutional right to hold public officials accountable.
But the trial court dismissed the case, saying it was not the kind of issue a court is allowed to decide, among other technical grounds. The appellate panel affirmed.
The spotlight on text-message retention now swivels back to Gov. Bob Ferguson, who suspended the auto deletion of Teams chat messages a year ago, on Feb. 17, 2025. At the time, Ferguson promised “a thorough six-month evaluation.” The Governor’s Office has yet to disclose the evaluation’s outcome.
The state Court of Appeals released its ruling on Jamie Nixon v. state of Washington, et al., as an “unpublished opinion.” This means the ruling resolved the matter before the court without establishing any precedent that can be used in future cases.
You can see the ruling on the Washington Courts website.