The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania declined to hear an appeal, ending a hard-fought battle over Penn State University Board of Trustees’ records sought by the investigative news outlet Spotlight PA, represented by the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic and co-counsel the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
“We are heartened that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to take this appeal from the Commonwealth Court’s well-reasoned decision,” Cornell First Amendment Clinic Local Journalism Fellow Kyle S. Clauss said. “Agencies cannot flout their obligations under the Right to Know Law by stashing public records on a third-party software platform. We look forward to our client receiving the records he requested nearly three years ago.”
In the fall of 2023, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records determined that requested records—documents the agencies’ secretaries received while serving on Penn State’s governing board—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.
In October 2025, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ordered the records to be released. The 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.”
In its April 7 decision refusing to hear the matter on appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ended a two-plus-year battle for the release of the records.
Devin Brader-Araje, a Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic student who argued the case at the Commonwealth Court, said “The Court’s decision affirms that the Right to Know Law will continue to serve the citizens of Pennsylvania and ensures that government officials remain accountable to their constituents. I am happy that Spotlight PA and the public will finally gain access to the documents the law entitles them to receive.”
For further background and coverage of the case, see:
High court rejects Penn State’s bid to keep trustee records hidden from public, Spotlight PA, by Spotlight PA Staff
Penn State loses fight to keep internal trustee documents hidden as Commonwealth Court sides with Spotlight PA, by Wyatt Massey of Spotlight PA State College