IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—6th Cir.: Is copyright protection a valid basis for declining an open records request? State court, not federal court, will have to decide, (Jan 15, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

Copyright questions merely “lurking in the background” do not give rise to federal court jurisdiction.

A parent whose state law records request was denied on the ground that the requested material was subject to copyright protection and therefore could not be distributed was not entitled to ask a federal court to declare that the materials were protected by fair use, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has held. The court, in affirming a district court’s decision that it did not have jurisdiction over the declaratory judgment action, emphasized that the case did not arise under the Copyright Act and that the state court was capable of addressing any copyright-related questions in the context of litigation over the open records law (Stovall v. Jefferson County Board of Education, No. 25-5357 (6th Cir. Jan. 14, 2026)).

The lawsuit was brought by Miranda Stovall, a Kentucky resident, mother, and parents’ rights advocate. When she learned that Jefferson County Public Schools planned to administer a mental-health survey to her child’s class, she requested a copy of the survey under the Kentucky Open Records Act so that she could distribute it to other parents. The county offered to let the parent inspect the survey in person but refused to let her make a copy because the material was ostensibly the copyrighted property of the survey’s publisher. As such, the county asserted, distributing the survey would violate “federal law,” namely in this case the Copyright Act.

The parent, seeking to obtain a copy of the survey to distribute, turned to the federal courts. Her lawsuit, which named both the county and the survey publisher as defendants, sought a declaratory judgment to the effect that distributing the survey to her would constitute a fair use under the Copyright Act. The district court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, leading to this appeal.

Federal jurisdiction. The court of appeals affirmed the judgment of the district court. Copyright claims, as with other claims, the court noted, can be heard in federal court only if they “arise under” copyright law. Under longstanding precedent, the court noted, that standard extends to three categories of cases. The first category, the court noted, was claims that rely on a cause of action created by the Copyright Act. The second, the court noted, was claims with state-law origins that “necessarily raise a disputed and substantial question of copyright law and that a federal court may properly entertain.” The third category, the court noted, was state-law claims asserting rights “that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright” and therefore preempted by the Copyright Act.

The lawsuit at hand fit into none of these categories, the court held. As to whether the cause of action relied on a cause of action created under the Copyright Act, the court noted, the answer to that was clearly no. Indeed, the court noted, the parent acknowledged in her complaint that her alleged entitlement to copies of the survey came from the Kentucky open records law, not federal law. “A state-law cause of action does not by itself establish a federal question,” the court noted.

Nor did the open records law “necessarily raise” a copyright law question, the court found. The Kentucky Open Records Act established a set of conditions, without reference to copyright law, the court noted, entitling applicants to inspect and make copies of public records. Federal copyright law came into the case, the court noted, only as a type of “federal law” that Jefferson County invoked as a defense to complying with the open records request. Put similarly, the court noted, copyright law was not “an essential element” of the open records claim but, instead, could arise only as a defense to that claim. That was fatal to the action, the court found. “A claimant may not circumvent ‘arising under’ jurisdiction by filing a declaratory-judgment action merely to anticipate a defense that otherwise could be presented in a state action,” the court observed.

Finally, the court noted, the open-records claim was not “a doppelganger of a federal copyright claim.” The parent asserted only that the County violated her state-law entitlement to inspect and copy eligible public records, the court noted. As such, the court noted, copyright law did not provide “the exclusive cause of action for the claim asserted” by the parent, nor did it “set forth procedures and remedies” governing that cause of action. “Because Stovall’s public-records claim does not resemble an infringement claim,” the court reasoned, “it does not belong in federal court.”

The parent’s arguments to the contrary failed to persuade the court. The parent argued that a state-law claim like hers arose under federal law because it turned on a “substantial question” of federal law. “But whether a state-law claim raises a substantial question of federal law is a necessary but not a sufficient basis for federal jurisdiction,” the court noted. “Because copyright law serves only as a defense to a Kentucky Open Records Act claim,” the court noted, the complaint lacked a “necessary” question of federal law. “The most one can say is that a question of federal law is lurking in the background,” the court found. “It is foreground questions of federal law, not background questions, that create federal-question jurisdiction.”

Nor did the fact that the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over copyright claims prevent the parent from fully litigating her claim in a state court. The parent argued that if she brought her claim in a state court under the open records act, the state court would be precluded from adjudicating the county’s defense of fair use. But where, as here, a claim does not arise under federal copyright law, the court noted, “state courts may exercise jurisdiction, even if that claim implicates a federal fair-use defense.” Indeed, the court noted, “at least one state court has recognized its jurisdiction to interpret federal fair-use doctrine in the context of a state open-records request.”

Finally, the court noted, the parent’s concern about being the subject of an eventual copyright lawsuit herself did not form a basis for federal court jurisdiction. The parent raised the possibility that the survey publisher might bring a copyright infringement action against her if her open records request were granted. “But that concern is just that: a possibility,” the court noted. No doubt, the court noted, if the publisher filed such an infringement action, it would arise under federal law. But this possibility was not enough, at least in this context, to support jurisdiction. The parent’s complaint, the court noted, did not identify a previous infringement action against her from the publisher. Indeed, the court noted, the complaint “does not even suggest that [the publisher] knew of Stovall’s existence before she filed this lawsuit.” The parent’s mere “speculative fear” of a lawsuit, as a result, was not enough to generate federal jurisdiction.

The Case is No. 25-5357.

Judge: Sutton, J.

Attorneys: Benjamin I. B. Isgur (Southeastern Legal Foundation) for Miranda Stovall. Jefferson County Board of Education, Brian Yearwood, Amanda Herzog, and NCS Pearson, Inc. Jason P. Renzelmann (Frost Brown Todd LLP) for NCS Pearson, Inc. Sean G. Williamson (Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP) for Jefferson County Board of Education, Brian Yearwood, and Amanda Herzog.

Companies: NCS Pearson, Inc.

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