Journalists in Texas have suffered a couple of tough blows in the House.

Rep. Diane Patrick (R-Arlington) has carried two bills this session that would limit the media’s access to school employees’ personal and criminal information. These bills are a direct backlash to the state fingerprint registry mandated by tough-on-crime lawmakers two years ago. Every school employee, campus volunteer and district contractor must now register with a centralized registry, maintained by the Department of Public Services. The registry verifies each employee’s identity and tracks that employee’s personal criminal history.

The database was intended to stop child molesters from coming in contact with Texas school children, but it doesn’t stop there. It also tracks each employee’s ongoing criminal history, sex offender-related or otherwise, so if you were fingerprinted in 2008 and are charged with driving while intoxicated in 2009, then your school district automatically would be notified of your new conviction.

KXAN was among the media outlets that requested that conviction information compiled on Austin Independent School District teachers be released for review. AISD balked, saying that the criminal histories of teachers were not appropriate for disclosure. In Austin, 250 teachers had a criminal history, not all of the charges rising to a level that would be of concern for parents or the media. It was hard to tell that, however, if the district was unwilling to release even basic information for the media to review.

Teachers were shocked and outraged that the media now knew their personal criminal histories. It’s no surprise, then, that teacher groups moved quickly this session to shut off the media’s access to employee information in the state database. That measure passed the House today, in House Bill 3419. But, unfortunately, lawmakers took it one step further. Under House Bill 2491, public employees’ records are completely sanitized. No longer will reporters or parents be able to take a teacher’s birth date, plug it into a criminal database and determine whether a public school employee who deals with children on a daily basis has any type of criminal convictions.

So in the same week journalists got a partial shield law in Texas, we’re also faced with new laws that make their jobs harder. As you might expect, none of us in the 4th Estate have been very happy about this: here; here ; and here.

Teacher groups claimed that the disclosure of birth dates would lead to identity theft. Somebody better tell everyone on Facebook. It’s tough when lawmakers stop the media from acting in the public’s interest. Here’s hoping the Senate finds a better balance between a teacher’s right to privacy and the media’s ability to protect the public’s interests.