The school released all non-exempt records and agreed to train staff to better fulfill requests
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: fac@firstamendmentcoalition.org
San Rafael, Calif. – The First Amendment Coalition has reached a settlement in a Public Records Act lawsuit against the Board of Trustees of the California State University (CSU) system. FAC represents Elizabeth Wilson, a student journalist at the Mustang News, the student paper at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly).
“I’m so pleased Cal Poly has agreed to a settlement, but it shouldn’t have required a lawsuit to assert my — and the Cal Poly community’s — right to this information,” said Wilson. “Access to records isn’t just important to journalists like myself, it’s important to anyone who seeks to hold institutions accountable.”
Wilson filed three public records requests in 2022 while researching stories on campus sexual assault, labor violations alleged by Cal Poly student employees, and a top administrator’s failure to respond to sexual harassment and other complaints.
Wilson never received the requested records. In April — more than 18 months after the records were requested — Wilson filed the Public Records Act lawsuit. In July, Cal Poly finally released 236 emails in response to the three records requests Wilson originally submitted. Only 21 emails were withheld as exempt from disclosure.
Today’s settlement also stipulates that within three months, the university will convene a training session for all staff who process Public Records Act requests for the Cal Poly campus that informs them of their obligations under the act. The training will be recorded and publicly posted.
The settlement also gives Mustang News reporters the opportunity to meet with Cal Poly’s records staff in person, every academic term over the next three years, to discuss the status of their open requests, the criteria and process staff uses to queue requests for processing, and suggestions for overcoming any practical basis for delaying or denying access to records.
“Access to public records is the people’s constitutional right,” said Annie Cappetta, legal fellow at First Amendment Coalition. “It’s not a favor that officials can facilitate when it’s convenient for them and ignore when it’s not. This settlement will remind Cal Poly staff of their duties to the public and ensure that they come to the table to improve their process with students.”