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Texas Eighth Court of Appeals (El Paso)
UT Austin Misapplied Texas Public Info Act
In Withholding Student Sex Crime Records
Ruling: A university must release records related to students disciplined for sexual misconduct to a newspaper that requested the info. UT Austin, et al., v. Gatehouse Media Texas Holdings, II, Inc., d/b/a Austin American-Statesman, No. 08-20-00157-CV (majority and dissenting opinion). Issued Nov. 29

This decision involves the interplay between the state Public Information Act (PIA) and the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in terms of what types of student records an educational entity that receives federal funds can release.

The “Final Results”
The Austin American-Statesman requested from UT, via a PIA request, specific information regarding the “final results” of disciplinary proceedings since Jan. 1, 2014, regarding students who had been found to have violated the university’s policies or rules regarding sexual misconduct.

The newspaper couched its PIA request to largely conform to what FERPA says an educational entity can, at its discretion, release regarding the “final results” of disciplinary hearings.

For students who had been found to have committed the violation, the newspaper sought the “final results” that included: 1) the student’s name, 2) the violation committed, 3) “any essential findings” supporting UT’s conclusion that the violation was committed, 4) the description of the sanction, 5) the date that the sanction was imposed and 6) the sanction’s duration.

2-1 Majority Decision
In a 2-1 majority decision, an Eighth Court panel concluded that UT erred because it both: 1) did not release any of the documents requested by the newspaper and 2) failed to timely seek a state attorney general’s decision on whether the info could be released.

What UT could have done, if it did not want to seek an AG’s opinion, was to release the documents, with the information redacted that UT believed would violate FERPA requirements.

The majority opinion ordered UT to release the documents and to pay the newspaper’s legal expenses.