Original Answer

Filed 2025-10-13 · By Caroline L. Scalf and Bennett D. Bryan (Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP) for Defendant Bibb County School District · Document type Answer and Affirmative Defenses View the PDF →

What is this document?

This is BCSD’s (the Bibb County School District’s) original Answer to the Complaint. It was filed on October 13, 2025 — exactly on the deadline set by the service waiver stipulation — by defense attorneys Caroline L. Scalf (CLS) and Bennett D. Bryan (BDB) of Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP in Atlanta.

The Answer does two things. First, it lists eight affirmative defenses — standalone legal theories the District says would defeat the case even if the factual allegations were all true. Second, it goes through each numbered paragraph of the Complaint and either admits, denies, or claims the District “lacks knowledge” to respond.

The headline defense is the Sixth Defense, which invokes both FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act — the federal law protecting student education records) and IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — the federal law governing special-education services) as federal statutes allegedly protecting the settlement dollar figure from disclosure. IDEA did not appear in BCSD’s original ORA (Open Records Act) denial email (Exhibit B to the Complaint) or in its Attorney-General correspondence — so pairing it with FERPA here is a notable expansion of the District’s legal theory.

The Seventh Defense — that the District “acted with substantial justification” in its response to the Open Records Act request — is not about winning the case on the merits. It is aimed at the fee-shifting statute, O.C.G.A. § 50-18-73(b) (O.C.G.A. stands for “Official Code of Georgia Annotated” — Georgia’s compiled state statutes; § means “section”), which requires the court to award attorney’s fees to a prevailing ORA plaintiff unless the agency proves substantial justification. In other words, BCSD is laying the groundwork to avoid paying the Melody’s legal bills even if BCSD loses.

The Answer also contains several admissions that the Melody’s counsel will use against the District at summary judgment. Most notably, BCSD admits that the July 18, 2024 Board of Education minutes publicly state, “Settlement for Student JH (ACTION). The Board voted unanimously to approve this action item,” and it admits that some settlement amounts have in the past been disclosed on Bibb County Board of Education meeting minutes. It also admits it received the Georgia Attorney General’s (AG — the state’s chief lawyer) April 24, 2025 letter rejecting the District’s reliance on Mullins v. City of Griffin.

This Answer was later superseded by an Amended Answer filed December 29, 2025.

At a glance

Field	Value
Filed	October 13, 2025
Filed by	Caroline L. Scalf and Bennett D. Bryan (Parker Poe) for Defendant BCSD
Document type	Answer and Affirmative Defenses
Pages	11
Served on	Plaintiff’s counsel Joy Ramsingh (Ramsingh Legal) via Odyssey eFileGA
Docket event	Joins the issues; triggers discovery; later superseded by Amended Answer (12/29/2025)

The eight original affirmative defenses

Taken directly from the document, in order:

First Defense. Plaintiff fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.
Second Defense. At all times, the District complied with all applicable laws and policies, acted reasonably and in good faith, and exercised due care and diligence toward Plaintiff.
Third Defense. Plaintiff’s Complaint may be barred by the affirmative defenses stated in O.C.G.A. § 9-11-8(c) (the generic catch-all list of civil defenses in Georgia’s pleading rules).
Fourth Defense. Plaintiff’s claims are barred by laches, waiver, estoppel, and the applicable statutes of limitation.
Fifth Defense. At all times relevant to the June 2, 2025 ORA request, the District complied with the Georgia Open Records Act.
Sixth Defense. The document at issue is protected from disclosure by FERPA and its regulations, in addition to IDEA and its regulations.
Seventh Defense. The District acted with substantial justification in its response to the June 2, 2025 Open Records Act request.
Eighth Defense. The District reserves the right to assert additional affirmative defenses.

Deep dive — legal concepts, explained

What is an Answer?

In civil litigation, an Answer is the defendant’s formal written response to the Complaint. Under Georgia’s Civil Practice Act (O.C.G.A. § 9-11-8 — the “Official Code of Georgia Annotated,” section 9-11-8), the defendant must respond to each numbered paragraph of the Complaint in one of three ways:

Admit — the allegation is true (it will now be treated as established fact);
Deny — the allegation is disputed (the plaintiff will have to prove it);
Plead lack of knowledge — the defendant does not know enough to admit or deny (which counts as a denial for most purposes).

The Answer also gives the defendant its first formal opportunity to raise affirmative defenses — legal theories that, if proven, defeat the claim even if the plaintiff’s facts are all true. Anything the defendant wants to raise as an affirmative defense generally has to appear in the Answer or it is waived.

Affirmative defenses

An affirmative defense is different from a simple denial. A denial says “that didn’t happen.” An affirmative defense says “even if it did happen, there is a legal reason the plaintiff still loses.” Common affirmative defenses include the statute of limitations (too much time passed), laches (plaintiff waited too long), estoppel (plaintiff’s own conduct bars the claim), and — relevant here — statutory preemption or exemption (a federal or state law protects the conduct or the record).

BCSD’s Sixth Defense is the heart of the case on the merits: it argues that FERPA and IDEA affirmatively exempt the settlement dollar figure from Georgia’s Open Records Act, so the ORA analysis never gets off the ground. The Seventh is a back-stop that is only about fees.

Why BCSD’s Sixth Defense adds IDEA

FERPA and IDEA are related but not identical federal statutes:

FERPA (20 U.S.C. § 1232g) protects the privacy of student “education records” held by schools that receive federal funding. It is the main federal student-privacy statute.
IDEA (20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. — U.S.C. is the “United States Code,” the federal statute book; et seq. is Latin for “and following,” meaning “section 1400 and the sections after it”) governs how public schools provide special education and related services to students with disabilities. IDEA has its own confidentiality regulations (34 C.F.R. Part 300 — C.F.R. stands for “Code of Federal Regulations,” where federal agency rules live) that in some respects run parallel to FERPA.

Adding IDEA to the Sixth Defense is strategically important. It signals, without stating outright, that the underlying “Student JH” matter may involve special-education services. If the JH settlement resolved an IDEA-related dispute, BCSD can argue that a second layer of federal confidentiality applies — not just FERPA’s general student-records protections, but also IDEA’s specific confidentiality rules for disability-related information.

This was not part of the District’s original public posture: BCSD’s June 5, 2025 ORA denial email (Exhibit B to the Complaint) invoked FERPA only. The Answer is the first place in the case where IDEA appears as a legal shield. That expansion is exactly the kind of move the plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment would later challenge as too little, too late.

Why the Seventh Defense (“substantial justification”) is aimed at fees

Under Georgia’s Open Records Act fee-shifting provision, O.C.G.A. § 50-18-73(b), a court presented with a prevailing ORA plaintiff must award reasonable attorney’s fees unless the public agency proves that its conduct was “substantially justified” or that special circumstances make an award unjust.

“Substantially justified” means something like: a reasonable agency lawyer could have taken the same position even if a court ultimately disagrees. It does not require the agency to have been right; it requires the agency to have been reasonable.

The Seventh Defense is a pure fee-defense posture. By pleading it in the Answer, BCSD preserves the right to argue at the end of the case — even if it loses on the merits and has to produce the settlement figure — that its reliance on FERPA and Mullins v. City of Griffin was reasonable enough that the Melody should not collect its legal fees.

That matters because attorney’s fees in ORA cases can easily outstrip the underlying public interest at stake. A denied fee motion is what turns a nominal win into a financially painful one for the requester — and, conversely, a granted fee motion is what creates real deterrence against future stonewalling by public agencies.

Admissions that help plaintiff

Even though the Answer is a defensive document, BCSD admits several key facts that the Melody will cite at summary judgment:

¶ 8 — admits Laura Corley sent the June 2, 2025 ORA request.
¶ 9 — admits Stephanie Hartley responded for the District on June 5, 2025, and that Hartley’s response is Exhibit B to the Complaint.
¶ 14 — admits that “some settlement amounts have been disclosed on Bibb County Board of Education’s meeting minutes.” This is the admission that undercuts BCSD’s current refusal — the District has historically done what it now claims is legally forbidden.
¶ 15 and ¶ 17 — admits that the excerpts quoted in the Complaint accurately reflect portions of the 2019 and 2017 board minutes.
¶ 18 — admits the July 18, 2024 board minutes state “Settlement for Student JH (ACTION). The Board voted unanimously to approve this action item.” This is the admission that establishes BCSD itself publicly identified “Student JH” by those initials.
¶ 22 — admits the District characterized the JH settlement dollar amounts as involving “confidential, personally-identifiable, education-related information about a particular BCSD student.” (This is BCSD’s own language; plaintiff will use it to frame the legal question squarely.)
¶ 23 — admits Corley submitted a prior request tied to the same July 18, 2024 settlement.
¶ 25 — admits Corley complained to the Georgia Attorney General’s Office about a prior ORA response.
¶ 26 — admits the Assistant Attorney General commented that Mullins v. City of Griffin “does not appear” to support the District’s non-disclosure position.
¶ 27 — admits Exhibit F is a true and accurate copy of the April 24, 2025 correspondence from the AG’s office.
¶ 29 — admits the District denied Corley’s June 2, 2025 Open Records Act request.

Taken together, these admissions establish the core narrative of the Complaint almost entirely by consent: a public record exists, the District publicly named Student JH in its own minutes, the District has historically disclosed settlement amounts, the AG has told the District its chosen authority is weak, and the District still refused. The remaining dispute is purely legal — whether FERPA (plus IDEA, added here for the first time) bars disclosure notwithstanding all of that.

Why this matters

The Answer does two things for the shape of the rest of the case.

First, by moving so many factual paragraphs into the “admitted” column, it narrows the case to a pure legal question that is well-suited to summary judgment — which is exactly what the Plaintiff would later move for. The more the District admits, the less discovery the Plaintiff needs to win.

Second, by adding IDEA to the Sixth Defense and by pleading “substantial justification” as the Seventh, the District signals its endgame: even in a loss, aim to deprive the newspaper of its fees. That makes the fee contest nearly as strategically important as the merits — and it foreshadows a sharp second round of briefing later in the case.

Finally, this Answer is the baseline against which the Amended Answer filed on December 29, 2025 should be read. Any changes between the two versions are worth examining closely — amendments are where defense theories often shift, narrow, or expand based on what discovery has revealed.

Read the original

Download the PDF →

Part of Court Filings · Case No. 2025-CV-083495 · Bibb County Superior Court