A Kentucky judge has sided with the state's flagship university in an open-records dispute involving a student newspaper's dogged pursuit of documents it wants to review in a sexual harassment investigation of a former professor.
In his ruling Monday, Fayette Circuit Judge Thomas Clark reversed a state attorney general's opinion in the case pitting the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Kernel, the student newspaper. The AG's office said last year that the university had violated the state's open-records law by refusing to release documents on the professor's case to the newspaper on the Lexington campus.
The university responded by suing the campus newspaper. Under state law, the AG's opinions can be appealed, but the attorney general cannot be named as a party in the suit. The university said its dispute was with Attorney General Andy Beshear, not the campus newspaper.