University of Georgia pulls out of 'Cop City' lawsuit requesting public records
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/17/university-of-georgia-cop-city-lawsuit
University of Georgia pulls out of Cop City lawsuit requesting public records
Dean of law school orders first amendment clinic to curtail core work, including on Atlanta Police Foundation case
Timothy Pratt
Fri 17 May 2024 05.00 EDT
The dean at the University of Georgias law school has ordered its first amendment law clinic to cease all work related to public records law including a lawsuit against the Atlanta Police Foundation, the non-profit organization behind a planned $109m training center colloquially known as Cop City.
Dean Peter B Bo Rutledge gave the order to clinic director Clare R Norins within weeks of the clinics February announcement that one of its attorneys would be representing the digital news outlet Atlanta Community Press Collective, or ACPC, and the Chicago-based digital transparency research organization Lucy Parsons Labs in a lawsuit against the police foundation. Both groups filed the suit after making numerous queries to the organization under Georgias open records act, only to be ignored.
It begs the question what precipitated this? said Paulson, of Rutledges decision.
Susan E Seager, law professor and director of the Press Freedom Project at the University of California at Irvines law school who routinely sues state and local agencies for violating public records laws called the law schools decision outrageous and cowardly.
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(Someones chain got jerked:
The police foundations attorney in the lawsuit is Harold Melton, a former Georgia supreme court chief justice who graduated from UGA and now teaches at the school.)