The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has ordered the state Department of Education to release Penn State University Board of Trustees records to investigative news outlet Spotlight PA. Spotlight PA is represented by the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic and co-counsel the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The dispute began in May 2023 when Spotlight PA filed open records requests with the Pennsylvania Departments of Education and Agriculture seeking documents the agencies’ secretaries used while serving on Penn State’s governing board.
In the fall of 2023, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records determined that requested records must be made public under the state Right to Know Law. Penn State and the Department of Education appealed, arguing that they were not subject to the RTKL and did not possess or control the records because the materials were stored on Diligent, a cloud-based file-sharing platform. The agencies further contended that disclosure of unredacted information could harm the university’s finances and employee retention.
The Commonwealth Court rejected Penn State and the Department of Education’s arguments as “without merit,” warning that “[h]olding otherwise 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.” Allowing such a result, the Court said, “would run contrary to the RTKL’s remedial purpose and the General Assembly’s intent that the RTKL be used as a vehicle for increasing and ensuring government transparency.”
“This decision is a major victory for government transparency and accountability,” said Devin Brader-Araje, a Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic student who argued the case at the Commonwealth Court. “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.”
In addition to Brader-Araje, the team that worked on the case included the Clinic’s Associate Director Heather Murray, who manages the Clinic’s Local Journalism Project, RCFP attorney Paula Knudsen Burke, former extern Nyssa Kruse and former student Robert Plafker.
The Local Journalism Project provides pro bono legal assistance on behalf of news outlets, journalists, researchers and other newsgatherers in aid of their critical function of reporting and communicating important news and information to their communities. The Local Journalism
Project also provides counsel on a range of issues crucial to the operations of community newsrooms.
For coverage of the case, visit the following link: https://www.spotlightpa.org/statecollege/2025/10/penn-state-pennsylvania-commonwealth-court-public-records-penn-state/.