TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has filed a lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Conference, the latest in the ongoing legal battle between Florida State University and the ACC.
Moody filed the 13-page complaint Thursday morning in Leon County court.
In her complaint, Moody contends the ACC is violating Florida's public records law and should be required to turn over all documents related to the league's media rights contract with ESPN.
"Under secret media rights contracts located somewhere in the North Carolina headquarters of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the fate of hundreds of millions of dollars of a Florida public university is written," Moody wrote in her lawsuit.
Moody said her office requested the media rights contracts on Jan. 4.
"The ACC would not produce a single word of the contracts, including terms already disclosed publicly (including by the ACC itself), the signature blocks, dates, the numbers of paragraphs, recitals or even the number of pages," Moody wrote. "The contracts are a public record because Florida State University (FSU) examines and uses the media rights contracts in the transaction of the agency's official business. The contracts are also the product of delegated authority by FSU to the ACC."
FSU and the ACC have been sparring in North Carolina and Florida courts over the enforcement of the conference's grant of rights. FSU is seeking a path to exit the ACC without paying more than $500 million in exit fees and the cost of buying back its media rights.
The ACC filed its lawsuit in North Carolina court in December, one day before FSU sued in Florida court.
A Tallahassee judge earlier this week ordered FSU and the ACC to enter mediation in hopes of settling the Florida suit.
ACC lawyers contend that its contracts are confidential and shouldn't be made public, but attorneys for FSU have said the documents should be made public for financial transparency.
Clemson, another ACC school, also filed a lawsuit in South Carolina challenging the ACC's grant of rights.
Neither school has filed a formal notice to withdraw from the ACC.
"The ACC is asking a state entity — Florida State University — to potentially pay and lose more than a half a billion dollars but is refusing to produce the documents related to that outrageous price tag," Moody said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. "We sent a public records request to the ACC in January, but they failed to fully comply. We are taking legal action against the ACC for wrongfully withholding these important public records."
Moody, a University of Florida graduate, also sided with Florida State in December after it was left out of the College Football Playoff, becoming the first undefeated Power 5 conference champion to be snubbed from the four-team field. Moody sent a subpoena to the playoff selection committee in December, seeking to understand how a one-loss champion from the Big 12 Conference and a one-loss champion from the Southeastern Conference leapfrogged the Seminoles in the final playoff rankings.
