The Assembly and five other North Carolina media outlets filed suit last week against UNC-Chapel Hill over its refusal to release a report on the School of Civic Life and Leadership.
The report, which a professor who helped with the probe said is 400 pages long, covers a seven-month investigation into various allegations involving the school and its leaders. The Raleigh office of multinational law firm K&L Gates finished the inquiry early this year. But Paul Newton, the university’s general counsel, told reporters last month UNC-CH would not release any part of the findings.
We believe the school’s refusal to release the report is a violation of North Carolina public records law.
Newton and Chancellor Lee Roberts have cited protections for personnel information and attorney-client privilege in declining The Assembly’s request for both the full report and the executive summary. In an exchange cited in the lawsuit, the university also rejected our argument that their stated exemptions should not apply to the entire report, which university officials described as containing information about policy and process violations. We also believe the university has the right to release the report in full, as it did with a 2014 investigation into phony courses.
As we reported last month, attorney Amanda Martin, who runs Duke University’s First Amendment Clinic, is skeptical of Newton’s arguments.
”The statute is clear that an agency has an obligation to produce nonconfidential information even when it is co-mingled with confidential information,” she said. “In this case that likely means there is a significant amount of information related to process and policy that needs to be released. I can’t believe out of 400 pages there’s no information that can be shared.”
The News & Observer, WRAL-TV, The Daily Tar Heel, NC Newsline, and Carolina Public Press are also parties to the suit Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych PLLC filed April 10.
We will keep readers updated as the case proceeds.