CUNY Endowment Records Lawsuit: Article 78 Ruling and Fees

A New York state court ruled on August 8, 2025 that the City University of New York unlawfully withheld investment portfolio records and corporate purchase orders from a law student who had requested them under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, and ordered the university to produce them. The decision in the CUNY endowment records lawsuit, Southey v. City University of New York, rejected the university’s claim that its holdings were shielded as trade secrets and awarded the student attorney’s fees.¹

What the Student Asked For

In March 2024, Sarah Southey, a first-year CUNY Law student, filed a FOIL request seeking all records and reports on CUNY’s portfolio holdings going back to January 2020, covering its long-term and short-term investment pools and college foundation investments. She also asked for contracts and purchase orders between CUNY and 30 named companies, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Dell, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Chevron, Caterpillar, and IBM.² Southey said the request was meant to support student campaigns urging CUNY to divest from companies the organizers described as complicit in Israel’s military operations in Gaza.³

CUNY denied the request in May 2024. For the portfolio records, the university invoked the trade secrets exemption under New York Public Officers Law § 87(2)(d), arguing that release would cause “substantial injury to the competitive position” of its investment manager and would expose proprietary trading strategies.⁴ For the corporate contracts, CUNY’s central office said it had no responsive records and directed Southey to file separate requests with each individual college. Her administrative appeal was denied.

The Article 78 Petition

On November 1, 2024, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed an Article 78 petition on Southey’s behalf in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, under index number 160213/2024.⁵ The petition sought an order compelling production of the withheld records and an award of attorney’s fees.

A central argument was that CUNY had released essentially the same type of investment data in 2015 to a different student group and was now selectively withholding it. NYCLU staff attorney Veronica Salama said the university had a “legal obligation to uphold transparency and treat all its students, faculty, and community members equally, no matter their viewpoint,” and could not “pick and choose which viewpoints to respect and which to ignore.”⁶ The petition also pointed to public disclosure practices at other large public university systems, including the University of California and the University of Texas.⁴

What the Court Ordered

The court granted the petition in part and denied CUNY’s cross-motion to dismiss. It ordered CUNY to produce its portfolio holdings reports, allowing appropriate redactions if specific portions contained genuinely sensitive trading strategies or methodologies. It also ordered the university to produce purchase orders related to contracts with the named companies that were made under state umbrella purchasing agreements.¹

Why the Trade Secrets Defense Failed

New York’s trade secrets exemption shields records that are themselves trade secrets or that were submitted by a commercial enterprise when disclosure would cause “substantial injury to the competitive position of the subject enterprise.” The court found CUNY had not carried its burden on either prong. The university had failed to provide “specific, persuasive evidence” that releasing the records would cause competitive harm, and the “mere fact that discussions are held outside the public view” does not make information a trade secret. CUNY’s argument that disclosure would have a “chilling effect” on its ability to attract investment managers was described by the court as “speculative, at best.”¹

The 2015 Disclosure That Undercut CUNY’s Case

In 2015, a group called CUNY Prison Divest obtained a CUNY investment holdings report through FOIL. The report, dated September 30, 2014, listed company names and total holdings by manager and region, and showed that CUNY held $275,200 in private prison companies at that time: $248,900 in G4S, $13,300 in Corrections Corporation of America, $8,400 in GEO Group, and $4,600 in Aramark.⁷

In the Southey litigation, CUNY called that release erroneous and noted that a different firm now manages the portfolio.² The court acknowledged that a prior erroneous disclosure does not waive future exemption claims, but concluded that CUNY had still failed to meet its burden of showing why the information now deserved protection.¹

What CUNY’s Portfolio Actually Holds

The disclosure order reaches a large pool of money. According to CUNY’s audited financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, the university held roughly $1.45 billion in total investments across its short-term and long-term pools, and its supporting organizations held an additional $1.58 billion, for a combined total of approximately $3 billion.⁸ The portfolio is overseen by the Board of Trustees and managed day-to-day by an outsourced chief investment officer.⁹

Attorney’s Fees

The court also granted Southey attorney’s fees under FOIL’s fee-shifting provision, finding that she had “substantially prevailed” and that CUNY lacked a “reasonable basis for denying access.” The fee amount was referred to a special referee for determination and had not been set as of the ruling date.¹

What Happens Next

CUNY did not immediately say whether it would appeal. A university spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that CUNY was “reviewing the court’s decision, its legal options and possible next steps.”¹⁰ No public reports of an appeal or of completed document production have emerged since the ruling.

Southey framed the outcome as the start rather than the end of her effort. “Now that we have one disclosure, it is a massive win,” she said. “We can demand that they divest from specific companies. We’ll know the pressure points.”³

1
NYCLU. Decision and Order, Southey v. City University of New York
2
NYCLU. Memorandum of Law in Support of Petition, Southey v. City University of New York
3
Mondoweiss. CUNY Students Win Landmark Legal Case Demanding the School Disclose Investments Linked to Gaza Genocide
4
NYCLU. Verified Petition, Southey v. City University of New York
5
NYCLU. Sarah Southey v. City University of New York
6
NYCLU. CUNY Must Release Investment Records to Pro-Palestine Student Organizers, Court Rules
7
The Knight News. CUNY Financially Tied to Private Prison Industry
8
City University of New York. Financial Statements for the Year Ended June 30, 2025
9
City University of New York. CUNY Investment Policy Statement
10
Inside Higher Ed. Court Orders CUNY to Release Endowment Records