Utah Third District Court · No. 260902698

Marini v. Utah State Records Committee

Dismissed Judicial review

Forum: Utah Third District Court
Case number: No. 260902698
Decided: Aug 31, 2026
Outcome: Dismissed
Underlying case: Closed. Dismissed with prejudice by the Third District Court on August 31, 2026.
Requests at issue: The names, ranks, titles, employment histories and salaries of Brigham Young University Police Department officers, requested from BYU Police under the alias Film the Police USA
Conduct at issue: A police department that would not process a records request, or issue a denial that could be appealed, unless the requester gave a legal name, home address and daytime phone number
Underlying claims: Petition for judicial review of a Government Records Office order under Utah Code 63G-2-404, with a constitutional challenge to the contact information requirement in 63G-2-204(1)(a)

What the court held

BYU Police confirmed receiving the request but would not process it until the requester supplied a legal name, mailing address and daytime phone number. The Government Records Office asked for the same and, when he declined, dismissed the appeal on 17 February 2026 for lack of jurisdiction, telling him to bring any challenge to the requirement in district court.
He filed there 52 days later. The court held the petition was out of time: the deadline in Utah Code 63G-2-404(1)(a) is 30 days and is jurisdictional, copying the records ombudsman on a notice of appeal is not a request to mediate that tolls it, and the order he was served spelled the deadline out.
The mandamus and declaratory claims failed with it. Following Gordon v. Nostrom, 2024 UT 18, the court held GRAMA’s remedies create no independent right to sue, so they could not be used to get around the 30 day limit.
The court also found no standing. The request and the office appeal were made as Film the Police USA and the suit was brought by Enri Marini, with nothing in the administrative record tying the two together. Either the publication is a separate entity, which he cannot represent as a non-lawyer, or it is his pseudonym, in which case the request never carried the identification the statute requires.
On the merits it held the request was defective in any event, because the name, address and phone number in Utah Code 63G-2-204(1)(a) are mandatory and there is no substantial compliance exception, so BYU Police’s duty to respond was never triggered.
The court declined to reach the First and Fourth Amendment claims. A simpler remedy existed, refiling the request with the required details, and it held the constitutional arguments inadequately briefed, distinguishing the anonymous leafleting cases he relied on as having no application to a statutory records process.