On February 23, 2023, the Mackinac Center filed a FOIA request for agreements made between Michigan State University and a local farmer who had donated a parcel of land to the university. The Center filed its request after learning that MSU was considering selling the land for use in an economic development mega-site, which may have been prohibited by the donor’s agreement with the university. Michigan State University’s response redacted several paragraphs of the agreement, claiming that they contained private information, but a review of the documents suggests that the exemptions Michigan State University claimed don’t apply to the information that was redacted.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation is suing Michigan State University to obtain full and complete transparency regarding the agreements, and to hold the university accountable for its poor FOIA practices.
CASE UPDATE: On August 15th, 2023 the case was dismissed.
On February 23, 2023, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for agreements related to a specific piece of land donated to Michigan State University through a trust agreement by a local farmer. The land donated to the university was rumored to be under consideration for sale to construct an industrial mega-site, and questions were raised as to whether Michigan State could legally sell the land for that purpose. The Mackinac Center made its FOIA request to shed light on the matter.
Michigan State University responded to the Mackinac Center’s FOIA request on February 28th by supposedly granting it in part. The university failed to provide the original trust agreement, only providing heavily redacted amendments to the agreement. Entire paragraphs of amendments to the trust agreement were blacked out, hiding what changes had been made. In addition, without the original agreement, it’s impossible to know which parts of the trust have been amended.
The university attempted to justify the redactions by invoking the statutory privacy exemption, which is usually only applied to personally identifying information. That justification almost certainly cannot apply to amendments to a legal agreement for the donation of land. The overapplication of the privacy exemption is especially troubling because the FOIA statute is designed to provide government transparency. Unless a specific exemption applies, all information in public records should be disclosed, especially when there is significant public interest in the information.
Because of Michigan State’s over-application of the privacy exemption led to such extensive redactions that the provided documents are essentially useless, and the public interest in the land at issue, the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on July 10, 2023 to compel Michigan State University to provide a full and transparent response to their FOIA request.
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