A unanimous three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals affirmed this morning a lower court’s dismissal of an Elon University student journalist’s public records suit against the university and the state attorney general’s office. The student reporter for Elon’s Phoenix14News had tried in 2010 to secure more than just the first page of an incident report tied to another student’s arrest. Campus police refused to turn over the record.

Appellate judges ruled that private Elon was not subject to a public records request:

[W]e conclude the Campus Police Department at Elon University, which is a private university, is not subject to the North Carolina Public Records Act, and the dismissal of Plaintiff’s complaint against Defendant Elon University pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) was proper, as “the complaint on its face reveals that no law supports the plaintiff’s claim” that Defendant Elon University violated the Public Records Act.

The judges also ruled that the attorney general’s office is not responsible to maintaining arrest records and incident reports for every campus police department.