Earlier today, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced that she filed a lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Conference for “wrongfully withholding public records from review.”
The lawsuit comes just over months after Florida State University was left out NCAA College Football Playoff, and millions of dollars that would have been generated from ticket sales and other related revenue. Shortly after FSU’s absence was from the NCAA playoff was confirmed, Moody, a University of Florida graduate, demanded transparency from the ACC and ESPN, the exclusive broadcaster of the playoffs games, regarding the process that kept FSU out of the playoff.
In the following weeks, FSU filed suit to leave the ACC with a lower financial penalty than their original agreement. Clemson University and the University of North Carolina have filed similar suits, and the ACC has yet to share the documentation that Moody requested.
“The ACC is asking a state entity—Florida State University—to potentially pay and lose more than a half a billion dollars but is refusing to produce the documents related to that outrageous price tag,” Moody said. “We sent a public records request to the ACC in January, but they failed to fully comply. We are taking legal action against the ACC for wrongfully withholding these important public records.”
Below is an excerpt from Moody’s news release which was published earlier today.
In a legal action filed today in the Circuit Court of the Second Judicial Circuit, Attorney General Moody argued that the media rights contracts are public records because they were made or received in connection with the official business of a public state university, or persons acting on their behalf.
The lawsuit argues that the documents are public records, even if prepared and maintained by a private organization, if they were ‘received’ by agents of a public agency and used in connection with public business. Additionally, matters of public concern are not transformed into private matters merely because the documents reside with a private organization. If a private entity is acting on behalf of the state or local government and created a document that reflects the business of the governmental entity, the document is a public record.
Attorney General Moody is urging the court to find that the defendants improperly withheld the media rights contracts and direct the ACC to immediately provide the requested records.
To read the full lawsuit, click here.
