The state Supreme Court said last week that the local newspaper in Cut Bank must be told what discipline was meted out to (unnamed) students involved in a school BB shooting incident, thus clarifying an earlier ruling that seemed to limit the general public's right to know what governmental bodies are up to.

But did it clarify it enough?

Last year, the high court threw out a lawsuit filed by a woman against the Darby School District because, the justices said, she had no standing to sue because she had no personal stake in the issue at hand. Newspapers, including this one, were quick to complain about what they perceived as a weakening of the public's constitutional right to know and Montana's open meeting laws. And, in fact, some school districts and other organizations began acting as if the newspapers' worries were right on the mark.

In a concurrence to the Cut Bank decision, Justice James C. Nelson said both the newspapers and the school districts were wrong, and called the Darby decision "misunderstood and over-read." He said the ruling was not an invitation to flout the public's right to know (absent overriding privacy concerns), but rather simply a matter of requiring some kind of standing in order to sue. Unless a petitioner is required to have some interest in a government action beyond that of the general public, Nelson said, "anybody could sue anyone for anything."

We agree that, given the number of cranks out there, an unlimited ability to sue would create a silly season for the justice system. Just because you're breathing doesn't give you the right to tie up the courts with your inane "legal" ramblings. And it's good to know that the court has no intention to limit constitutional rights.

But we're not talking about anybody suing anybody over anything. We're talking about a citizen alleging a government cover-up. This is a special, constitutionally protected case.

The court found that the Cut Bank paper had standing because it is in the business of reporting on government. This makes us uncomfortable, because newspapers have never claimed to have any special access to government that isn't also available, in theory anyway, to Joe Blow citizen.

By all means, let's jump all over the cranks who try to file frivolous lawsuits. And that includes goofy lawsuits about government conspiracies. But in so doing, let's not curtail the right of a citizen - any citizen - to know what his government might actually be trying to do behind his back.