Knight News has won a major victory in its lawsuit with the University of Central Florida over whether names of student government officials are confidential education records.
The appellate court ruled that UCF broke the law by covering up names of SGA officials accused of bribery and other corruption in SGA misconduct and impeachment records.
“We hold, therefore, that such information involving misconduct by student government officers is not protected from disclosure under FERPA,” the opinion released Friday states.
The court stated that those names are not protected because “student government officers have implicitly consented to the dissemination of that information given Florida’s statutory scheme concerning university student governments.”
This proves a small nonprofit news outlet and our dedicated lawyer can take on UCF’s army of lawyers and protect the public’s right to know.
— UCF Knight News (@UCFKnightNews) April 8, 2016
The full court order can be found here.
We reached out to UCF for comment but did not hear back immediately.
