After a Thursday court order by District Judge Jeffrey Holmes, the name of the person who made a Colorado Open Records request for the names of Douglas County School District teachers who participated in a sick out last February has been released by the district.

Mike Kane, a law partner of KHOW Radio host Dan Caplis, sent the request, he said, after he heard Caplis, on his program Feb. 2, call for someone to find out the names.

In a statement, Kane said, “I submitted the open records request for my own use as a parent of children within the Douglas County School District.

As a favor to and at the request of the District, I withdrew the submission and never received any of the names.”

Kane filed a Colorado Open Records Act request to the district in Feb. 2, requesting the names of teachers who were going to call in sick on February 3.

Most of the teachers used that day to attend a rally in support of embattled then-Superintendent Corey Wise, who was fired the next night in a contentious school board meeting during which the conservative board voted 4-3 to oust him.

Colorado media outlets, including The Gazette, submitted a public records request for the initial request. After the initial request was made, Kane communicated to the district that he wanted the request to be withdrawn.

The district then responded to media outlets that had requested the initial request with a denial, saying that the initial request was no longer a public record that had to be disclosed.

Kyle Clark, a news anchor at 9News, sued the district, arguing that the district was wrong to withhold the requested request, and that the requested request needed to be turned over.

Key to the dispute is the timing of the various requests.

Douglas County School District’s attorney argued in court on April 29 that once the request was withdrawn, it went from being a public record to no longer being a public record.

“The timing is important in this case,” Andrew Ringel, the district’s attorney said. “This was no longer considered public record once it was withdrawn.”

But Clark, and other media outlets had requested the record prior to the decision to withdraw the request,. This meant, Colorado First Amendment attorney Steven Zansberg argued, that it could not be changed from a public record to no longer being a public record.

“It was a public record when Mr. Clark made this request,” Zansberg said in the April 29 court hearing, “and remains a public record to this day and forever more.”

The decision in the case clarifies how Colorado’s public records law works, in particular, solidifying the standing of the public to request records and documents that are part of a government agency’s work and rejecting the notion that a public records request submitted to an agency can be withdrawn and not turned over upon request.

The school district provided 9News with this statement about the judge’s order:

“The Douglas County School District (DCSD) has reviewed the District Court’s May 5, 2022 Order related to a lawsuit filed under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA). DCSD defended the disclosure of the open records request at issue because it believes that a withdrawn CORA request is not a public record.

DCSD receives many information requests under CORA every day. We want our citizens to be comfortable asking for public records without fear of personal retaliation. We also feel strongly that it is important to protect our teachers and staff who may have been absent on February 3, 2022, for a variety of reasons, while simultaneously upholding our responsibility to provide publicly releasable documents under CORA.”