A Commonwealth Court judge ordered Penn State University to release internal Board of Trustees documents, likely ending a yearslong open records dispute between the university, several state departments, and Spotlight PA.
Penn State has 30 days to turn over documents related to a private trustees retreat and a nonpublic board committee meeting, which both occurred in 2022. The court’s Monday ruling upheld a 2023 decision by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records.
Spotlight PA was represented pro bono by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic in the case.
“This decision is a major victory for government transparency and accountability,” Devin Brader-Araje, a Cornell Law School student who argued the case, said in a statement. “The Court made clear that government officials cannot use technology to hide public information from the public. The ruling reaffirms that Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law will continue to serve its intended purpose of ensuring open access to government records.”
Neither Penn State’s Office of Strategic Communications nor board leadership responded to a request for comment for this story or a question about whether the university planned to appeal the latest decision.
The case stemmed from a records request Spotlight PA filed in May 2023 with Pennsylvania’s agriculture and education departments for records the agencies’ secretaries used while serving on the university’s governing board. While Penn State is largely exempt from the state’s open records law due to a legal carveout, a 2013 court ruling said records that the agencies’ secretaries used as trustees could be accessed.
The Office of Open Records ruled that some of the records the newsroom requested should be made public. Penn State and the Department of Education appealed the decision to Commonwealth Court.
Penn State, in legal filings and in court last month, argued the state agencies did not possess or control the records Spotlight PA sought because Penn State housed the files on a cloud-based, file-sharing service. The online system allows the university to control who can access which files and whether the records can be downloaded.
The court, in its decision, said Penn State’s argument was “without merit.” Siding with the university, the court said, would contradict the intent of the state’s open records law for transparency and would “perversely incentivize Commonwealth agencies, local agencies, and affected third parties like Penn State to utilize remote servers and/or cloud-based services, in order to ensure that they would no longer need to disclose what would otherwise constitute public records.”
Under the ruling, Penn State must also unredact portions of a 2022 document given to trustees about the university’s “fiscal challenges” and altering the budget to better align with Penn State’s “priorities and values.”
Since 2022, in response to a budget deficit, the university has made steep cuts, paid some employees to leave, and announced the closure of seven campuses across the state.
In legal filings, Penn State said making the redacted information public would “create distrust and confusion” or “damage employee morale and retention.” The court ruled that “such vague jargon and conclusory statements fall woefully short” of proving that Penn State would be harmed by the information’s release.
“Legal gray areas and clever workarounds will not stop our team in pursuit of the people’s right to know, and we’re pleased with the outcome in this case,” Christopher Baxter, CEO and president of Spotlight PA, said in a statement. “Spotlight PA is proud to be fighting for government transparency and openness at all levels, on behalf of all taxpayers in Pennsylvania, regardless of their politics.”