Gavel in front of the Ohio Supreme Court. (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal. Only repost photo with the original article.)
The Ohio Supreme Court sided with an Ohio school district in an opinion that allows the school district’s community email distribution list to be published.
The state’s highest court has ruled that Xenia Community Schools must provide an email distribution list requested by Darbi Boddy, a former Lakota Local School Board member who has already gone to court with Xenia County over her claims of First Amendment violations.
Boddy asked the court to force the school district to produce a list used to distribute to the school community a newsletter sent by the district superintendent. She specifically asked for records related to the October 2024 bulletin. In court documents, Boddy accused Xenia of slowing the process and acting in “bad faith” by “pretending that exceptions to the public records law could be applied.”
The public information request filed by Boddy’s attorneys was filed after she tried to support a Xenia school board member who, her attorneys say, “questioned and questioned specifically whether critical race theory was taught in the Xenia Community City School District.”
Boddy – the founder of Access Ohio, an organization committed to “preserving traditional American values in education and civic life” – told the school board that the district had not adequately addressed social and political issues related to race and gender.
On her organization’s website, Boddy says she is involved in many Republican organizations and opposes “critical race theory” in schools, comprehensive sex education and social-emotional learning.
In her complaint to the Supreme Court of Ohio, she said Xenia is one of many school districts in the country that has “recently come under scrutiny for actually or perceived indoctrination of students to support and accept highly controversial and divisive concepts, including DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and/or CRT (critical race theory).”
Boddy’s lawyers claim that Xenia’s superintendent, Gabriel Lofton, used the October bulletin to criticize the board member and tried to “exert undue pressure” by commenting on the situation and stating, “I really hope that our Board of Education will be able to work together to end this issue once and for all.”
Boddy asked for the distribution list after questioning the reach of the superintendent’s newsletter. The school district said the newsletter is sent to school district members, while Boddy’s attorneys say anyone can sign up to receive it on the district’s website.
The school district argued that the email list was exempt from Ohio’s Public Records Act because it contained “protected student information” and did not document anything covered by the law.
To qualify as a public record under Ohio law, records must document the entity’s “organizations, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities.”
The Ohio Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion saying the email list constituted a public record and should be turned over to Boddy, with “all personal information removed.”
In siding with Boddy, the court returned to a November 2024 case in which it ruled that email and newsletter distribution lists prepared by the Union Township Board of Trustees in Clermont County constituted public records. In that case, the court found that the mailing lists documented a “function, procedure or activity” of the municipality.
The court noted that the school district did not provide the court with an email list for private review by judges before making a decision because it was ordered to do so under seal. Because the district did not provide the documents as ordered, the court said it could not review them due to student privacy concerns.
“Because we cannot determine whether the list contains protected student information that may be exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act, the school district has not met its burden of proving that the list is fully within the ‘state or federal law’ exception,” the court said.
Lofton said the district’s priority throughout the case was protecting student privacy, even though the Ohio Supreme Court had previously ruled that email distribution lists are public records.
“This ruling allows us to meet legal requirements while upholding our ethical and legal obligations to protect our students and families,” Lofton said in a statement.
Boddy has had legal problems with the district before since he was a member of the Lakota Local School Board. In 2024, she filed a lawsuit against the Xenia school board and its president, arguing in federal court that her First Amendment rights were violated during a public comment session at the board’s October 2024 meeting.
She was ultimately kicked off the Lakota Local School Board and is attractive federal court rulingin which the court found that the evidence presented in the case did not prove that the First Amendment claim would succeed.
Boddy did not respond to a request for comment.
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