photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

The Lawrence school district offices building, located at 110 McDonald Dr., is pictured in May 2025.

A federal judge has ordered the Lawrence school district to pay attorney fees to students in a lawsuit over the district’s use of monitoring software after violating the Kansas Open Records Act.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Vratil ruled that the Lawrence school district did not act in good faith after not responding within the required timeframe to students’ Kansas Open Records Act requests. Now, the district must reimburse the plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs to the plaintiffs.

As the Journal-World reported, the subject of the KORA requests was from student journalists inquiring about the safety management and monitoring software Gaggle, and the district’s switch to a similar program, ManagedMethods. Vratil found that the district violated KORA in April, and ordered the district to comply and respond to the requests.

At a hearing on April 23, Superintendent Jeanice Swift testified that the district delayed compliance because of concerns about protecting student privacy, the scope of the requests being “more expansive than (the) defendant had ever received,” and uncertainty about how the requests would interact with ongoing litigation.

However, it was unclear to Vratil whether the district even attempted addressing Swift’s concerns through consultation with legal counsel.

Monday’s order said that KORA does allow agencies to redact sensitive information while still producing records, and it even provides mechanisms for claiming a request is unreasonably burdensome. The district failed to timely justify any concerns, provide cost estimates or detailed explanations until months after the requests were submitted.

There is also evidence that district officials were sensitive to public scrutiny surrounding student monitoring practices and were focused on managing public perception, the order said. The judge compared the district’s conduct to a prior Kansas Supreme Court case involving agency “stonewalling,” describing USD 497’s response as “drawn out, hollow and perplexing.”

“Absent the Court’s order, it is unclear when – if ever – defendant would have complied with KORA,” the order said.

While the court did not require all records be produced immediately, it directed the district to continue making KORA-compliant disclosures and submit weekly status reports beginning June 12.

Current and former Lawrence and Free State High School students filed a lawsuit in August 2025, alleging that the Lawrence school district has been violating their First and Fourth Amendment rights by conducting illegal searches of the digital files the student journalists produce. The defendants in the case are the school district.

While the district has stopped using Gaggle, the district entered into another contract with a different student monitoring software, ManagedMethods. The transition to ManagedMethods was not voted on by board members, as the Journal-World reported.

The district argues that it has continued using a similar software in order to be in compliance with legislation such as the Children’s Internet Protection Act to ensure student safety.

A timeline for the remainder of the case set a discovery deadline of Sept. 11, a pretrial conference is proposed for Sept. 30 and the jury trial is currently scheduled for Jan. 4, 2027. The court estimates the trial to last eight to 10 days.