One detail within an eight-page lawsuit filed against Utah State University last month by former athletics administrator Jerry Bovee could represent a challenge for the school, according to a media law attorney.
Bovee, who was fired as USU deputy athletics director, alleges two of his ex-bosses — the athletic director and the university’s president — have been using a messaging app that automatically deletes conversations to subvert the state’s open records laws. If true, it represents a big problem, attorney David Reymann told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Public officials are supposed to retain records for a long enough period that the public can “meaningfully access them when issues come to light,” Reymann said. This time frame varies per record but is typically a matter of years.
According to the lawsuit, USU athletic director Diana Sabau asked Bovee and other employees in March to download the messaging app, called Signal. Bovee’s lawsuit alleges that messages sent through the app would delete “at the end of each day,” and states that Sabau recommended the app because she could “‘have more candid conversations’ that could not be discovered in an open records request.”
As reported by Paighten Harkens of the Tribune, Signal is a free-to-use, end-to-end encrypted messaging app that allows a user to set a retention schedule for messages — deleting them forever anywhere from seconds to weeks after they’re read.
The lawsuit alleges that Sabau and “the President of USU used [the app] often.”
“This is behavior that’s designed to prevent the public from seeing what’s going on in their public institutions,” Reymann said. “And that’s unbelievably troubling, if that’s true.”
On Dec. 27, Bovee filed two related lawsuits against Utah State University. One alleged that Sabau was “hostile” toward him and that the university fired him in July after he reported multiple policy violations.
Related: Former USU Athletics Administrator Bovee Sues Utah State Over Termination
The second lawsuit, which contains the allegation that officials were using Signal, alleges the university improperly denied Bovee access to open records concerning the formal grievance he filed against the university in August, contesting his termination.
University spokesperson Amanda DeRito told Tribune in a statement that “Signal is ubiquitous and widely used by universities for secure communications to prevent hacking.”
The statement added that the university "takes great care to ensure all communication methods are used in adherence with Utah public records laws.“
“We look forward to resolving this case in litigation and continuing to focus on our student-athletes and the success of our athletics programs,” it continued.
As for Bovee’s allegations in his other lawsuit, the university released a statement saying it “stands by its employment decisions and disputes Mr. Bovee’s presentation of events.”
Reymann said Friday that the Utah Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) has already dealt with this issue — whether officials are communicating via personal email addresses, on Snapchat, or elsewhere.
“Whether they are communicating on their official school email addresses, whether they’re communicating by Signal, whether they’re communicating by passenger pigeon,” he said, “it doesn’t matter.
“There is no question that if a government official is directing people to communicate by an application that ensures that the messages are deleted, and are never available for the public to see, that is a blatant violation of GRAMA."
