SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 2 -- The Pennsylvania
Attorney General's Office has responded to a binding
public records order requiring it to produce documents
about its Ticketmaster/Live Nation investigation by filing
three sworn affidavits and a ten-page supplemental legal
brief — but no documents. This amid America 250
celebrations in Philadelphia.
The Right-to-Know Law Officer for the
Pennsylvania OAG issued a Final Determination on June 4,
2026, ordering the office to produce records within thirty
days. That deadline falls on July 4. Rather than comply,
the OAG — now headed by Republican Attorney General David
Sunday — filed on July 2 a new submission arguing, in
essence, that the Final Determination was wrong and that
all responsive records are exempt. Three senior attorneys
in the OAG's Consumer Protection and Antitrust divisions
submitted sworn affidavits in support.
The problem is that the Pennsylvania
Right-to-Know Law does not provide for supplemental
briefing after a Final Determination has issued. It
provides one remedy for an agency that disagrees with a
Final Determination: an appeal to the Commonwealth Court
of Pennsylvania within thirty days. The OAG has not filed
such an appeal. Instead it has done something the law does
not contemplate — re-argued its case to the same officer
whose decision it is legally bound to follow.
Inner City Press sought the records
in connection with its ongoing coverage of the federal
antitrust trial against Live Nation Entertainment, United
States v. Live Nation, 24-cv-03973 (S.D.N.Y.), which
concluded with a jury verdict in April 2026. The
Pennsylvania OAG was a participant in the multi-state
investigation that preceded and ran parallel to the
federal case, having issued a subpoena to Ticketmaster in
February 2023 and joined the federal complaint. The
records Inner City Press sought concern that investigation
— including consumer complaints about ticket pricing and
service fees, and the OAG's own communications about the
investigation's progress. The OAG's new argument — that
all remaining records are shielded by the federal
Antitrust Civil Process Act because some were obtained
through a DOJ Civil Investigative Demand — is a novel and
aggressive claim that the Final Determination did not
address.
The ACPA protects materials that CID
respondents produced to the DOJ from being disclosed to
third parties. It was not designed to let a state AG's
office use a federal investigation as a shield against its
own state public records obligations. Inner City Press has
filed a response with the RTKL Officer asking that the
Final Determination be confirmed as standing, that the
July 4 deadline be enforced, and that the OAG be put on
notice that further non-compliance will be pursued through
the Commonwealth Court — including a potential request for
attorney's fees under the RTKL's fee-shifting provision.
Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law exists so that citizens
and journalists can find out what their government has
been doing.
An AG's office that litigates against a
ticketing monopoly on behalf of Pennsylvania consumers,
then files three sworn affidavits to avoid telling those
same consumers what it found, has some explaining to do.
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