TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Conference for allegedly withholding ESPN-related agreements from review.
The suit from AG Moody comes as the conference and Florida State University remain embroiled in a dispute over how much it might cost the Seminoles if the team were to leave the conference.
FSU has not given the ACC notice of a plan to leave, so much of this remains hypothetical.
Moody's lawsuit is targeting the media contracts between the conference and television partner ESPN. The documents could help explain exactly how much FSU might owe if it wanted to leave the ACC. The school has claimed that leaving the conference would cost as much as half a billion dollars due to the granting of media rights to the ACC.
The contracts have not been seen in unredacted form, even during a recent Florida court hearing on a lawsuit between FSU and the ACC. The school's attorney showed a document that was mostly redacted.
Moody's lawsuit says the records are public records even if the ACC and ESPN are private organizations. Specifically, "if a private entity is acting on behalf of the state or local government and created a document that reflects the business of the governmental entity, the document is a public record."
Read the full lawsuit below
Florida AG ACC Complaint by ABC Action News
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