Sherry v. Radnor Township School District
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 265, C.D. 2010
April 4, 2011
The Commonwealth Court ruled that honor code violations of students were exempt from disclosure under the noncriminal investigation exemption of the Right to Know Law and under the federal law governing student privacy, even though the requested records did not identify specific students.
The court also held that a requester could not depose agency officials to try to establish that records are public under the law.
Background
Judy Sherry submitted a RTKL request for records to the Radnor Township School District seeking Academic Honor Code violation reports from the district with identifying information removed.
The district denied the request, claiming the records were covered by the RTKL’s noncriminal investigations exemption and by the federal Family and Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a law that makes education records private.
Sherry appealed to the Office of Open Records, which affirmed the denial based on two affidavits submitted by district officials
Ultimately, after the trial court refused to allow Sherry’s lawyer to depose or cross-examine the officials who submitted the affidavits, Sherry appealed to the Commonwealth Court.
Commonwealth Court Decision
The Commonwealth Court ruled that an “investigation” is “a systematic or searching inquiry, a detailed examination, or an official probe.”
Here, the requested records were created as part of official probes of alleged student misconduct and were “forms upon which violations are noted and contain a description of the violative conduct, witness/teacher statements, and the course and result of the investigation.”
Consequently, the court concluded that the records related to an investigation and thus were covered by the RTKL’s non-criminal investigation exception.
The court also ruled that the records were exempt under federal law, which protects “personally identifiable information,” including any “information that, alone or in combination, is linked or linkable to a specific student.”
Here, according to the court, the district’s affidavits showed that it might be possible to identify students from the requested records, even though the request sought to have the records be “de-identified.” As a result, the court held that the release of the records would violate federal law.
Finally, the court ruled that the trial court did not err in refusing to allow Sherry to depose or cross-examine the two district officials who submitted affidavits.
The court explained that “neither the RTKL nor the courts have extended a right to discovery . . . to a requesting party in a RTKL action.”