The Kentucky Kernel provides a chronology of the events associated with the University of Kentucky's four year legal battle with the student newspaper.

The legal battle will culminate in an oral argument before the Kentucky Supreme Court at 9:30 a.m. on October 23. Sometime thereafter, the Court will issue an opinion determining the relationship between the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Kentucky's open records law.

The chronology omits one significant event.

In 2016, then-Kernel editor, Will Wright, appealed UK's denial of the newspaper's request for records relating to the university's sexual harassment investigation to the Kentucky Attorney General.

In one of my last official acts before my retirement, I wrote the August 1, 2016, open records decision affirming The Kernel's right to the records and calling out a recalcitrant University. It was this decision that UK later appealed through the courts.

https://ag.ky.gov/Priorities/Government-Transparency/orom/2016/16ORD161…

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/kykernel.com/content/tncms…

To the credit of the Attorney General's management team, not a word of the open records decision was changed.

Because UK abdicated its duty to prove that the investigative records were exempt from disclosure, the Attorney General rightly concluded that the records must be disclosed to The Kernel.

Four years later, The Kernel still waits for the records.