SALT LAKE CITY — QBs and OTs and PATs and NIL and GRAMA.
They’re all acronyms you’ll hear this college football season… at least in Utah.
While the first three refer to happenings on the field, the fourth refers to name, image and likeness (NIL). It allows college athletes to earn money for things like product endorsements.
The final GRAMA abbreviation stands for the Utah Government Records Access and Management Act — the state’s public records law. The Deseret News and the public universities are arguing whether it still applies in a lawsuit over NIL contracts.
The Utah Legislature earlier this year changed law to specify NIL contracts are not public records. But the Deseret News and the state’s universities were already in the midst of a lawsuit over the contracts.
Now, a judge has to determine which rules the sides should play under.
“The Legislature examined all of the public policy concerns and passed the law saying these are not subject to GRAMA,” assistant attorney general Vanessa Walsh told a state court judge in a hearing last week.
Even before the new law was passed, five universities — the University of Utah, Utah State, Weber State, Utah Valley and Southern Utah — contended the contracts were education records and that state and federal law forbid their disclosures.
But the Utah State Records Committee, which arbitrates GRAMA disputes, sided with the Deseret News and ordered the contracts released. The universities appealed by filing a lawsuit in state court late last year — before the law changed.
Deseret News attorney Jeff Hunt argued in last week’s court hearing that the Legislature didn’t take the necessary steps to specify the change was retroactive.
“The Utah Supreme Court has made it very clear that the courts must apply the version of GRAMA in effect at the time of the requester's initial request,” Hunt said.
Hunt, who also has represented FOX 13 News, also told the judge the case isn’t about learning what college athletes like Utah quarterback Cam Rising are earning from NIL contracts; it’s about asking whether the contracts are equitable and making sure the universities are doing their jobs in enforcing NCAA policies and state law.
“This is about whenever you have millions of dollars washing around in a system like this,” Hunt said in court, “and the state is undertaking a regulatory review process and saying, ‘We're going to regulate these contracts to make sure that it doesn't run afoul of the law or the NCAA regulations,’ there needs to be some oversight.”
It’s not clear when the judge will rule.
Even if the Deseret News survives the motion to dismiss based on the law change, the universities can still argue the contracts wouldn’t be public record under the old law.
If the Deseret News prevails on both issues, there could be more litigation over which records it receives — everything up to the time of the first GRAMA request, everything up to the present or something in between.