FOI #26-422 (06-24-26, 4:16 pm) - Subject - Student athletes and wearable tech
Name - Danielle Citron
Affiliation - UVA School of Law
We request documents and/or electronic records, including email communications, describing the extent to which
information is being gathered, collected, stored, or otherwise handled about student athletes’ bodies (their health, bodily functions and activities, health indicators, conditions, and/or treatments, including but not limited to information about sleep, heart rate, menstruation, activity levels etc.) in connection to the school’s NCAA affiliated teams, including but not limited to the men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, soccer, swimming and diving, lacrosse, track and field, rowing, wrestling, and tennis teams, as well as the football, baseball, softball, and field hockey teams, in the last 3 years. This includes, but is not limited to, contracts, agreements,
and/or memoranda of understanding (meaning, any and all formal or informal documents) involving the school’s athletic directors, students, and/or third party companies that sell or provide wearable health and fitness devices like Catapult, WHOOP, OURA, and other related entities. We are interested in obtaining the agreements,
correspondence, and/or memoranda about the handling of student athletes’ body and health data, not the actual handling of such data of any particular student. Any personally identifiable information to the athlete should be redacted or withheld, thus providing only the exchanges and agreements regarding the aforementioned data.
If there are any fees for searching or copying these records, please inform me if the cost will exceed $100. However, we would like to request a waiver of all fees because the disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest and will contribute significantly to the public’s understanding of student athlete data privacy issues. I am on the faculty of UVA Law and Dr. Sloane is on the faculty of the Data Science school and the Media school at the college. We are writing about student athletes and wearable tech. We do not seek this information for commercial purposes. This information is key to our scholarly research.
We look forward to your office's prompt response withing 4 business days, pursuant to CT FOIA. § 1-200 et seq. If any questions or concerns arise, please don't hesitate to contact me at dcitron@law.virginia.edu or (443)957-5083.
If you deny any or all of this request, please cite each specific exemption you feel justifies the refusal to release the information and notify me of the appeal procedures available to me under the law. Thank you for considering our request.