Iowa college can shield records

“The University of Iowa can withhold hundreds of documents related to its inquiry into a dorm-room assault, the state’s highest court ruled Friday in a case pitting safeguards for student privacy against calls for transparency about campus crime.”

The university argued that federal laws restricted their ability to divulge information about the case. The journalists who sought this information, however, saw the information as necessary to cast an objective light on what was potentially an awkward moment for the university. The ruling sets up a potential confrontation that might need to be resolved by the Supreme Court (this would require the paper to appeal) as other states have allowed these same data to be released.