The case stems from 2005, when The Dallas Morning News requested an updated state employee payroll database. Former Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn released most of the database but excluded birth dates, in contrast to previous years when the newspaper asked for and received that information ...

Wanda Garner Cash, past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and a journalism professor at the University of Texas, agreed birth dates are critical for distinguishing state employees with the same names.

For example, newspaper or television reporters may be looking for government employees with criminal records by checking birth dates against conviction records.

"If we can't distinguish them by their birth date, we run the risk of not telling a story or telling the wrong story," Cash said.