>>>AL law REQUIRES that the records be destroyed immediately?
No. Alabama law requires that paper ballots be retained for 22 months. The law says notbing about the retention requirements for the digital images of those paper ballots. The legislature has not addressed the issue of digital retention so the court could not step in and require it.
Does AL have a required retention period for records requested via Open Records laws - to ensure that anything a requestor may be entitled to see is not destroyed before it could be accessed?
A lawsuit requesting retention is basically the equivalent of a FOIA request, I would think.