RADFORD -- A legal fight between The Roanoke Times and the city of Radford over a Freedom of Information request that the city wants to keep confidential will continue into December, a judge ruled Friday.

After hearing arguments and testimony in the case, Radford Circuit Court Judge Joey Showalter directed attorneys for both sides to submit briefs by next month. Another hearing will be set later, Showalter said.

The lawsuit centers around two FOIA requests filed with Radford officials in August and September by Roanoke Times reporter Tim Thornton. Among other things, Thornton asked the city to provide him copies of any other FOIA requests the city received between June 15 and Sept. 18.

In response to Thornton's requests, City Attorney Jim Guynn provided heavily redacted copies of two FOIA requests, erasing names and other pertinent information and in one case excluding two pages of a two-and-a-half-page document. The redacted letters were FOIA requests written by Radford spokeswoman and Deputy City Council Clerk Becky Hawke to the city in July and August requesting a copy of a findings report from an internal city investigation into a harassment complaint.

Radford City Council members have declined to discuss the investigation referred to in Hawke's FOIA requests.

To redact information from public records, the city must point to a specific exemption in the law that allows the information to be withheld. Under the law, personnel records pertaining to identifiable individuals may be kept confidential. In this case, Showalter must decide if parts of a FOIA request can also be classified as personnel records and thereby withheld from the public.

In its court filings, the newspaper has argued that FOIA requests are by their very nature public records and no parts of them may be withheld.

"Mr. Guynn wants to make the FOIA requests into personnel records, but they are not," Roanoke Times attorney Stan Barnhill told the court Friday.

Furthermore, allowing the city to redact the contents of a FOIA request prevents the public from ensuring that the city is following the FOIA law, Barnhill said.

But, Guynn countered, requiring the city to disclose otherwise confidential information included in FOIA requests would allow anyone to disguise confidential records as FOIA requests to make them public.

"The fact that you couple something with a FOIA request doesn't mean it gets disclosed," Guynn told the court.

Even if the court finds that the redacted information may be classified as personnel records, Barnhill said, the city still cannot withhold them in this case. Hawke testified Friday that she has officially waived the confidentiality of some personnel records pertaining to her. According to FOIA law, when such a waiver is given, "the public body shall open such records for inspection and copying."

But, Guynn told the court, Hawke's waiver does not automatically mean the city may turn over information on the harassment complaint.

"There is more than one person involved," Guynn said.

According to Guynn, another unnamed employee must waive confidentiality before the documents may be disclosed.