Plaintiff’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment
Filed 2026-03-10 · By Lucas W. Andrews, Stanton Law LLC (counsel for The Macon Melody) · Document type Motion for Partial Summary Judgment with supporting memorandum and two exhibits View the PDF →
Legal shorthand used here: MSJ = Motion for Summary Judgment (asking the judge to decide without a trial). MPSJ = Motion for Partial Summary Judgment. BCSD = Bibb County School District. ORA = Georgia’s Open Records Act (the state public-records law). FERPA = Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (federal student-privacy law). IDEA = Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (federal special-education law). PII = personally identifiable information. O.C.G.A. = Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia’s compiled state statutes); § = “section”. U.S.C. = United States Code (the federal statute book). C.F.R. = Code of Federal Regulations. Case citations like 262 Ga. 848 (1993) read as: volume number / reporter name / page number / year.
What is this document?
This is the single most consequential filing the newspaper has made so far. On March 10, 2026, The Macon Melody — through its lead counsel Lucas W. Andrews at Stanton Law LLC in Atlanta — asked Judge Ken Smith to decide, before any trial, that two of Bibb County School District’s (BCSD’s) main legal defenses cannot succeed as a matter of law. That kind of request is called a motion for partial summary judgment, or “MSJ” for short (MSJ = Motion for Summary Judgment; “partial” because it only attacks part of the case).
The ~35-page package contains an 18-page memorandum of law, a statement of undisputed facts, and two out-of-state court opinions appended as exhibits. Every page is aimed at one question: when a public school board votes in open session to pay a settlement to a student’s family, can the district hide the dollar amount behind federal student-privacy statutes (FERPA — the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act — and IDEA — the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law governing special-education services)? The newspaper says no, and it has marshaled Georgia Supreme Court precedent, federal regulations, and persuasive rulings from Michigan, Arizona, Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, New Jersey, California, Delaware, and the U.S. Supreme Court to prove it.
The motion targets two specific affirmative defenses BCSD raised in its Answer: the Sixth Defense (FERPA and IDEA bar disclosure) and the Ninth Defense (the lawsuit cannot proceed without joining the student and parents as indispensable parties). Knock those out, and BCSD’s case for secrecy largely collapses.
The motion also asks the court to affirmatively rule on two undisputed baseline facts: that BCSD is an “agency” under the Georgia Open Records Act (ORA), and that the settlement documents are “public records.” Getting those rulings locked in early removes easy off-ramps at later stages of the case.
At a glance
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Filed | March 10, 2026 |
| Filed by | Lucas W. Andrews (Stanton Law LLC, Atlanta) |
| Document type | Motion for Partial Summary Judgment + Memorandum + Exhibits A & B |
| Pages | ~35 (18-page memorandum of law plus motion, statement of facts, and two exhibits) |
| Targets | Sixth Defense (FERPA/IDEA) and Ninth Defense (indispensable parties) |
| Relief requested | Dismissal of two defenses; declaratory rulings that BCSD is an “agency” and the records are “public records” under the ORA |
| Hearing | April 29, 2026, 2:00 p.m., Courtroom E, before Judge Ken Smith |
The arguments in plain English
The newspaper’s memorandum is long and densely footnoted, but the actual logic is clean. Here is the argument, broken into five moves.
1. FERPA only protects “education records” — and a dollar amount isn’t one. FERPA (the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) is the statute BCSD keeps pointing to. But FERPA’s own definition, at 20 U.S.C. § 1232g(a)(4)(A) (U.S.C. = United States Code, the federal statute book; § means “section”), protects only records that (a) “directly relate” to a student and (b) are “maintained by” the educational agency. A settlement check written to resolve a tort claim doesn’t describe the student’s grades, discipline, attendance, IEP, or anything else academic. It is a financial transaction between the district and a claimant. The motion cites a long line of federal and state decisions — Dahmer v. Western Kentucky University, Wallace v. Cranbrook Educational Community, Ellis v. Cleveland Municipal School District, Bauer v. Kincaid, Colonial Educ. Ass’n v. Bd. of Educ. of Colonial Sch. Dist., and Poway Unified School District v. Superior Court — all holding that settlement amounts, incident reports, and similar administrative records are not “education records” even when a student is somehow involved.
2. Georgia’s own Supreme Court has already read “education record” narrowly. In Red & Black Publishing Co. v. Board of Regents, 262 Ga. 848 (1993) (case citations read: volume / reporter / page / year — so this is volume 262 of the Georgia Reports, page 848, decided in 1993), the Georgia Supreme Court held that FERPA’s definition of “education record” reaches only records pertaining to “academic performance, financial aid, or scholastic probation.” A settlement dollar amount fits none of those three buckets. This is binding Georgia precedent — Judge Smith is obligated to follow it.
3. Even if it were an “education record,” federal regulations allow de-identified release. The motion’s fallback argument is that 34 C.F.R. § 99.31(b)(1) — a Department of Education regulation (C.F.R. = Code of Federal Regulations) — expressly authorizes agencies to release “education records” from which all personally identifiable information (PII) has been removed. The district could produce a dollar amount with the name redacted. There is no FERPA violation in a number with no name attached to it.
4. BCSD itself already published the student’s initials — it can’t now weaponize a privacy claim it chose to compromise. This is the cleverest move in the brief. BCSD’s whole theory rests on the idea that releasing the settlement amount would let the public identify “JH.” But BCSD itself is the entity that published the initials “JH” in its own publicly-posted board minutes when the board approved the settlement in open session. A public agency cannot voluntarily broadcast the identifier it now claims must be protected and then invoke that same identifier as a reason to withhold related records. Plaintiff cites three authorities for this principle: K.L. v. Evesham Township Board of Education, 423 N.J. Super. 337 (“v.” = versus/against; the volume-reporter-page-year format means volume 423 of the New Jersey Superior Court Reports, page 337) (holding a district “cannot take advantage of its own violation” to escape disclosure); The Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524 (1989) (U.S. Supreme Court: when a government discloses information lawfully, it cannot then punish publication of that same information); and Cause of Action Institute v. NOAA (same principle in the federal FOIA — Freedom of Information Act — context).
5. If the records aren’t education records, there’s no student/parent interest to protect — so the Ninth Defense dies with the Sixth. BCSD’s Ninth Defense says the court can’t even hear this case without the student and parents formally joined as parties. But that defense only works if those non-parties have a legally protected interest in the records at issue. If the dollar amount isn’t an education record and isn’t FERPA-protected, the student and parents have no more right to block its disclosure than a stranger would. The Ninth Defense collapses into the Sixth — if the Sixth falls, the Ninth falls with it.
Deep dive — legal concepts, explained
What is summary judgment vs. a trial?
A trial is what most people picture: witnesses, a jury, objections, a verdict. It happens only when the parties genuinely disagree about what the facts are — who hit whom, who said what, who signed what.
Summary judgment is what happens before a trial, when one side says: “Even if you believe every fact the other side alleges, the law still requires judgment in my favor.” A judge — not a jury — decides it by reading briefs and exhibits. No witnesses testify. The judge only asks two things: (a) is there any genuine dispute about the facts that actually matter, and (b) if we assume the facts the other side’s way, who wins as a matter of law? If the answer to (a) is “no” and (b) favors the moving party, the judge rules and the case (or part of it) is over.
Summary judgment is a powerful tool precisely because it can end a case without a trial. Trials are expensive, slow, and unpredictable. Summary judgment is faster, cheaper, and decided by a legal professional interpreting statutes and precedent.
Partial vs. full summary judgment
A full motion for summary judgment asks the court to decide the whole case. A partial motion asks the court to decide only certain issues — specific claims, specific defenses, or specific factual questions — while leaving the rest for trial.
The Melody’s motion is partial because it does not ask Judge Smith to resolve the entire Open Records Act case in the newspaper’s favor today. It asks him to: (1) strike two of BCSD’s defenses; (2) confirm BCSD is an “agency” under the ORA (Open Records Act); and (3) confirm the records at issue are “public records.” Other issues — attorney’s fees, penalties, bad faith, the exact scope of what must be disclosed — remain for later phases.
Partial summary judgment is a narrowing strategy. You peel off the issues you can win cleanly on the law so that everything left for trial (or for the remaining portions of the case) is simpler, shorter, and tilted in your favor.
Why target the Sixth and Ninth Defenses?
When a defendant files an Answer, it typically lists a string of “affirmative defenses” — legal arguments that, even if everything the plaintiff says is true, the defendant still wins. BCSD listed several. The Melody has chosen to go after two of them head-on.
Sixth Defense (FERPA/IDEA). This is the heart of BCSD’s case. The entire reason BCSD refuses to disclose the dollar amount is its claim that federal student-privacy statutes forbid it. If that defense fails, the district has almost nothing left to stand on.
Ninth Defense (indispensable parties). This is a procedural tripwire. BCSD argued the case can’t proceed at all without the student and parents joined as formal parties. If the court bought that, the Melody would either have to drag a minor and family into litigation — probably a fatal PR (public-relations) and practical problem for a news organization — or see the case dismissed. Killing this defense now forecloses a dangerous off-ramp.
Take out both, and what remains is essentially a straightforward Open Records Act case: did a public agency refuse to produce a public record? If yes, the newspaper wins.
The FERPA “education record” test explained
FERPA — the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1232g — is a 1974 federal statute that conditions federal education funding on schools keeping certain student records confidential. A key point: FERPA only protects records that meet its own definition of “education records.”
Under the statute, an “education record” must satisfy both prongs:
- It must “directly relate” to a student; AND
- It must be “maintained by” the educational agency or institution.
The word “directly” is doing heavy lifting. Courts have repeatedly held that records that mention a student, or involve a student tangentially, do not automatically “directly relate” to that student in FERPA’s sense. Administrative documents, police reports, employee personnel files, and — the cases cited in plaintiff’s brief argue — settlement payment records are not “education records” simply because a student appears somewhere in them.
The Melody’s cases hammer this point from multiple angles (the parentheticals below name the court and year — “W.D. Mo.” = federal Western District of Missouri; “N.D. Ohio” = Northern District of Ohio; “E.D. Mich.” = Eastern District of Michigan; “Del. Ch.” = Delaware Court of Chancery; “Cal. Ct. App.” = California Court of Appeal):
- Bauer v. Kincaid (W.D. Mo. 1991): campus crime reports aren’t education records.
- Ellis v. Cleveland Municipal School District (N.D. Ohio 2004): investigative records of teacher misconduct aren’t education records even though they name students.
- Wallace v. Cranbrook Educational Community (E.D. Mich. 2006): employment-related records concerning alleged abuse of a student aren’t education records.
- Colonial Educ. Ass’n v. Bd. of Educ. of Colonial Sch. Dist. (Del. 1996): a settlement agreement involving student allegations is not an education record.
- Poway Unified School District v. Superior Court (Cal. Ct. App. 2007): the settlement of a student tort claim is a public record, not a FERPA record.
Line those up and a clear pattern emerges: FERPA is about the student’s academic and disciplinary file, not about the agency’s financial and administrative paperwork.
Red & Black v. Board of Regents — Georgia’s narrow FERPA reading
Because this case is in Georgia state court, Georgia appellate precedent binds Judge Smith. The key precedent is Red & Black Publishing Co. v. Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, 262 Ga. 848 (1993), decided by the Georgia Supreme Court.
In Red & Black, the student newspaper at UGA sought records of a student organizational court’s disciplinary proceedings. The university refused, citing FERPA. The Georgia Supreme Court read FERPA narrowly and held that “education records” under FERPA cover only records pertaining to “academic performance, financial aid, or scholastic probation.” Anything outside those three categories is not an “education record,” regardless of whether a student’s name happens to appear on it.
A settlement check to resolve a personal-injury or tort claim is not academic performance. It is not financial aid. It is not scholastic probation. Under the Georgia Supreme Court’s own words, it therefore is not an education record at all — and FERPA does not apply.
This is probably the most load-bearing authority in the entire brief. It is a Georgia Supreme Court decision, on-point, and never overruled.
The BCSD-published-the-initials jiu-jitsu (Florida Star v. B.J.F.)
This is the plaintiff’s sharpest rhetorical move. BCSD’s argument goes: “releasing the dollar amount would let the public identify the student as ‘JH.’” Plaintiff’s response is: BCSD is the entity that told the public the student was “JH” in the first place — the initials appear in the board’s own publicly-posted meeting minutes when the board voted to approve the settlement.
In The Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524 (1989), the United States Supreme Court confronted a similar pattern in a different setting. A sheriff’s office had inadvertently included a rape victim’s name in a public incident-report room; a newspaper published the name; the state sued to punish the paper. The Court held the government cannot release information into the public domain and then punish others for using it. The constitutional principle is that the government bears the burden of protecting what it wants to keep secret; it cannot shift that burden to the public after the fact.
In K.L. v. Evesham Township Board of Education, a New Jersey appellate court applied the same logic to a school district: a district “cannot take advantage of its own violation” of a privacy duty to escape its separate transparency obligations. Cause of Action Institute v. NOAA applies the principle in a federal FOIA context.
Plaintiff’s point is simple and hard to rebut: BCSD voluntarily identified the student as “JH” in its public minutes. Whatever privacy argument BCSD might have had, it compromised by that publication. The district cannot treat its own public disclosure as a secret it is now entitled to protect.
What Herald Publishing and Heller show
The motion attaches two exhibits. They are not Georgia cases and do not bind Judge Smith, but they show how courts in other states have ruled on nearly identical facts.
Exhibit A: Herald Publishing Co. v. Coopersville Area Public Schools (Michigan Circuit Court, 2010). A local newspaper sued a Michigan school district for the amount of a student-related settlement. The district raised FERPA as a defense. The court rejected FERPA, held the settlement amount was not an education record, and ordered full disclosure. The opinion is appended as a complete exhibit so Judge Smith can read the analysis in its entirety.
Exhibit B: Heller v. Safford Unified School District (Arizona Superior Court, 2011). Similar posture — a records requester sought a settlement involving a student, the district refused citing FERPA, and the court ordered the full settlement agreement produced.
Persuasive authority from other states is not binding, but when multiple courts around the country have confronted the same factual pattern and reached the same answer, it signals that the law is settled in a particular direction. The Melody is telling Judge Smith: this question has been asked and answered in other state courts — and the answer is always the same.
What happens if the MSJ is granted
If Judge Smith grants the motion in whole:
- The Sixth Defense (FERPA/IDEA) disappears from the case.
- The Ninth Defense (indispensable parties) disappears from the case.
- The court enters declaratory rulings that BCSD is an “agency” and the documents are “public records” under the Georgia Open Records Act.
What’s left of BCSD’s case at that point is slim. The district might still argue about narrow redactions, or about whether specific paragraphs of the settlement agreement fall under some other exemption, but the central wall of federal-privacy-law objection would be gone.
If Judge Smith grants the motion in part, any portion he grants still permanently removes that issue from the case. Partial wins compound.
If Judge Smith denies the motion, the case proceeds toward a full hearing or trial on the merits, and the arguments made here preview the arguments the newspaper will make again later.
Why this matters
This filing transforms the case from a generic transparency dispute into a focused legal question with clear stakes. Two outcomes:
For BCSD: every defense the district has built its refusal around is now in the crosshairs. If Judge Smith agrees with the newspaper — even in part — BCSD loses the legal cover for its secrecy position and will be forced either to disclose or to appeal.
For Georgia open-records law generally: a ruling from Judge Smith adopting the newspaper’s reading of FERPA and Red & Black would be persuasive authority for every other Georgia school district facing a similar request. Conversely, a ruling against the newspaper would embolden districts statewide to hide settlement amounts behind FERPA.
The April 29 hearing is the pivot point of the case. Everything filed before leads up to it; everything filed after will respond to how Judge Smith rules.
Read the original
Part of Court Filings · Case No. 2025-CV-083495 · Bibb County Superior Court