Background
George Glassmeyer and the South Carolina Lottery Commission had litigated access to lottery-winner information for years. A 2022 settlement preserved the Commission’s then-current privacy policy through May 31, 2023, but provided that if the General Assembly did not enact legislation addressing the issue by that date, the Commission would release winners’ full names, cities, and states in response to later Freedom of Information Act requests. In June 2023, the General Assembly ratified an appropriations act containing a proviso that prohibited disclosure of a winner’s name and other personal information without consent.
After ratification but before the proviso’s July 1 effective date, Glassmeyer submitted eighteen FOIA demands. They sought winner information, checks and wire-transfer material, and extremely broad categories of Commission documents. The Commission withheld winner names, redacted signatures on checks, and sought judicial relief from three document requests it characterized as overly broad and unduly burdensome. The circuit court granted summary judgment to the Commission.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. It held first that the General Assembly had “enact[ed] legislation” within the settlement agreement’s meaning when it adopted and ratified the appropriations bill, even though the proviso took effect after Glassmeyer’s request. The agreement used enactment as the contractual trigger; it did not require that the legislation already be effective when the request arrived. The Commission therefore did not breach the settlement or FOIA by declining to identify winners.
The court also approved redaction of the signatures of people who drew Commission checks. The Family Privacy Protection Act and FOIA’s personal-privacy exemption supported protecting signatures, which can facilitate identity theft and added little to the public’s understanding because the checks otherwise disclosed the relevant government transaction. Balancing the privacy interest against the cumulative public value favored redaction.
Most significantly for future requests, the court addressed what “overly broad” and “unduly burdensome” mean under South Carolina FOIA. Looking to federal and other state authority because South Carolina appellate courts had not previously defined the terms in this setting, it considered search time, cost, file volume, and specificity. The requests at issue potentially covered more than three million documents, would require thousands of staff hours, and could cost millions of dollars. They identified long time periods and broad categories without useful subject-matter limits. FOIA promotes access, the court explained, but does not require a public body to halt its operations to investigate sweeping demands. The Commission could obtain judicial relief even though it had not historically charged search and redaction fees.
Key Takeaways
- Whether legislation satisfies a settlement condition depends on the agreement’s words; “enacted” can refer to legislative adoption and ratification rather than the later effective date.
- South Carolina agencies may redact signatures when the identity-theft and privacy risks outweigh any noncumulative public benefit from disclosure.
- FOIA burden analysis may consider staff time, cost, the number of records, and whether a request gives employees workable subject-matter boundaries.
- An agency’s choice not to charge retrieval or redaction fees does not forfeit its statutory right to seek relief from an overly broad or unduly burdensome request.
Why It Matters
This published decision supplies South Carolina’s clearest appellate framework for extreme FOIA requests. Requesters should define the activity, document type, custodians or recipients, subject matter, and a finite period closely tied to their investigative purpose. Public bodies seeking relief should build evidence showing the systems to be searched, likely volume, necessary review and redaction steps, staff hours, cost, and operational effect.
The ruling does not authorize agencies to reject difficult requests merely because compliance is inconvenient. Its facts involved millions of records and extraordinary expense. South Carolina lawyers should expect future disputes to turn on evidence of actual burden and on whether reasonable narrowing could preserve meaningful public access. Before litigation, both sides have an incentive to discuss narrowing by date, database, custodian, record type, or search term. Those negotiations can protect the requester’s core objective while giving a court a concrete record if the agency later claims compliance would disrupt its work.