Wisconsin group filed lawsuit against DPI over teacher license records

By Jon Styf
The Center Square

Another Wisconsin group has filed a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Public Instruction, this time over a $34,000 price tag to receive records related to educator license denials since 2018.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty requested records of those denials for applicants that failed to complete an approved program on Aug. 13, 2025 and received a response that DPI would charge $17,007 to review the 1,381 denied applications by hand.

WILL then attempted to narrow the request and DPI doubled the cost estimate to $34,014.

“An informed electorate is essential to representative government, which is why Wisconsin law strongly favors public access to government records,” WILL Associate Counsel Lauren Greuel said in a statement. “After months of delay, DPI is attempting to price the public out of that access by imposing tens of thousands of dollars in unlawful fees. Government transparency cannot depend on whether citizens can afford to pay for it.”

WILL filed the lawsuit asking the court to direct DPI to release the records without the fees, which the group calls “unlawful,” stating that state open records law allows only limited fees for producing records that may not exceed an agency’s actual, necessary, and direct costs.

“Manually reviewing by hand and screenshotting each denied application are not actual, necessary, and direct costs the DPI may impose,” WILL argued. “Even if the DPI could charge for those tasks, DPIs unreasonable delay in responding to the request, coupled with its excessive $34,014 fee, amounts to an unlawful denial of access to public records. WILL is asking the court to order production of the records and impose the remedies authorized by Wisconsin law.”

DPI’s teacher licensure process has been under scrutiny after a Capital Times series last year showing how the department kept records of sexual misconduct from teachers under wraps and out of the public eye. The series led to legislative hearings and a response from DPI claiming that the outlets’ headline was ‘completely false’ without elaborating on any errors in the story.

The Capital Times’ editor stood behind the outlet’s reporting.

WILL is just the latest to challenge DPI’s handling of public records and open meetings.

Dairyland Sentinel has fought for records related to the department’s handling of a 2024 Forward Exam standards-setting conference in the Wisconsin Dells while the Institute for Reforming Government has filed a complaint that DPI violated open meetings law at the same conference.

DPI has claimed that the work of the 88-member committee during the conference was not subject to open meetings or open records disclosure because it was setup by vendor Data Recognition Corp.