The New York Times reports that Arizona's Supreme Court ruled that metadata must be disclosed under Arizona's public records law, in what NYT calls a "groundbreaking ruling." The Arizona case did not involve GIS data and metadata, but I see no reason why this precedent and ruling would not apply to similar GIS data/metadata cases.

If nothing else, this ruling will surely bring more scrutiny to the oft-neglected metadata quality (or mere presence) issue in GIS.