Ohio Supreme Court rules school district-wide email list is public record

The Ohio Supreme Court sided against an Ohio school district in an opinion that allows an email distribution list for the school district community to be released as a public record.

The state’s highest court said Xenia Community Schools must produce an email distribution list requested by Darbi Boddy, a former Lakota Local School Board member who has already faced off against the Xenia district in court over her claims of First Amendment violations.

Boddy asked the court to compel the school district to produce the list that was used to disseminate a newsletter from the district’s superintendent to the school community. Specifically, she asked for records related to the October 2024 newsletter. In court documents, Boddy accused Xenia of slow-walking the process and of operating in “bad faith” by “feigning the applicability of exemptions” to the public records law.

The public records request from Boddy’s attorneys came after she attempted to speak in support of a Xenia school board member who her attorneys said “has challenged and questioned specifically whether critical race theory is being taught within the Xenia Community City School District.”

Boddy – who is the founder of Access Ohio ,which pledges to “preserve traditional American values in education and civic life,” – claimed to the school board that the district wasn’t dealing with social and political topics involving race and gender properly.

On the website for her organization, Boddy says she is involved in multiple Republican organizations, and says she stands against “critical race theory” in schools, comprehensive sex education and social emotional learning.

Her complaint to the Ohio Supreme Court claimed Xenia is one of many school districts in the country that “has recently come under scrutiny regarding the actual or perceived indoctrination of its students to support and accept highly controversial and divisive concepts, including DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and/or CRT (critical race theory).”

Attorneys for Boddy say Xenia’s superintendent, Gabriel Lofton, used the October newsletter to criticize the board member and attempted “to place undue pressure” by commenting on the situation and stating “I truly hope that our Board of Education will collectively be able to move us past 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 goes out to school district members, whereas Boddy’s attorneys argue the district’s website allows anyone to sign up to receive it.

The school district argued that the email list was exempt from the Ohio Public Records Act because it included “protected student information” and did not document anything falling under that law.

To qualify as a public record under Ohio’s law, records must document the “organizations, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities” of the entity.

The Ohio Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion that said the email list is a public record, and must be provided to Boddy, with “any personally identifiable information” redacted.

In siding with Boddy, the court went back to a November 2024 case they decided, in which it ruled that email and mail distribution lists for newsletters from the Union Township Board of Trustees in Clermont County were public records. In that case, the court said the mailing lists documented “a function, procedure, or activity” of the township.

The court noted the school district hadn’t provided the email list to the court for a private review by the justices before they made their decision, as it had been ordered to do under seal. Because the district didn’t provide the documents as ordered, the court said it couldn’t review them for 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 failed to satisfy its burden to prove that the list falls squarely within the ‘state or federal law’ exemption,” the court ruled.

Lofton said the district’s priority throughout its case was to protect student privacy, even knowing the Ohio Supreme Court had previously decided that email distribution lists are public records.

“This ruling allows us to meet the legal requirements while also abiding by our ethical and legal obligations to protect our students and families,” Lofton said in a statement.

Boddy has had previous legal run-ins with the district since being a member of the Lakota Local School Board. She filed a lawsuit against Xenia’s school board and its board president in 2024, arguing to a federal court that her First Amendment rights were violated during the public comment session of a October 2024 board meeting.

She was eventually voted off the Lakota Local School Board, and is appealing the ruling of the federal court, in which the court said the evidence provided in the case fell short of proving a First Amendment claim would be successful.

Boddy did not respond to a request for comment.