Law Clinic Forced To Drop Police Records Lawsuit, Citing Conflict Of Interest Because… It’s Also Subject To Public Records Laws

None of this makes sense. At least, not when you attempt to reconcile what’s being said with the university’s actions. It makes more sense later. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

A non-profit called the Atlanta Police Foundation, which claims to be interested in building a better relationship between Atlanta’s police and the people they police, decided to go the other direction recently by coughing up more than $100 million for a new law enforcement training center.

The planned center soon acquired a less-than-flattering nickname: “Cop City.”

This proposal was greeted with plenty of civil and not-so-civil opposition:

On March 5, 2023, protesters threw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers, and destroyed various construction vehicles.^[4][2] Hours later, police raided the nearby South River Music Festival and detained 35 people, alleging that vandals had hidden in the crowd.^[18] Twenty-three people were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, although arrest warrants did not present evidence of violence or property damage.^[18] Of the arrestees, one was from France, one was from Canada, and two were residents of the state of Georgia.^[2][16][19] Only one of the 23 arrestees was offered bond: a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, who had only been there for observation and because of this was freed on a $5,000 bond.^[20]

By May, prosecutors had charged more than 40 protesters with domestic terrorism,^[21] a move that Human Rights Watch called an “attempt to smear protesters as national security threats”.^[22]

At a May 2023 public meeting, Atlanta City Council members faced record-setting public opposition to a vote providing $31 million for the Cop City project. At the time, the project had received $60 million of corporate funding and was several months delayed.^[23] On May 31, a SWAT team arrested three organizers of a bail fund that had supported protesters with bail and legal defense. Those arrested were charged with money laundering and charity fraud.^[24][25] That same month, developers finished clearing the site of all existing vegetation and debris in preparation for construction.^[26]

Kind of a mess. In between all the highlights, there’s the reality. A non-profit decided it would (partially) fund a training center for cops on abandoned land (that once contained a prison). Residents were far less keen on this idea. One of the members of the anti-“Police City” group was shot and killed by Atlanta cops (a recently fired weapon allegedly carried by the man was found at the scene). Lots of protesters were arrested, possibly on trumped up charges. Some people claiming to be supportive of protesters were arrested on fraud charges.

The whole thing is a mess, and it’s still pretty messy. That would explain the public interest in police records detailing anything about “Cop City,” the PD’s relationship with the Atlanta Police Foundation, the city’s communications with both of the previously listed entities, the PD’s interest in anti-Cop City protesters, as well as anything related to its protest policing tactics, the shooting of one of the protesters, the claims that multiple protesters were engaged in “domestic terrorism,” and the investigation/arrests of those charged with money laundering and fraud.

It just makes sense that the University of Georgia’s law school would be somehow involved in all of this. Its First Amendment law clinic sought a bunch of police records related to “Cop City.” As is almost always the case when it comes to public records requests, the law clinic is now involved in litigation seeking to force other government agencies to relinquish requested documents.

What doesn’t make sense is the university pulling the plug on this specific portion of the law clinic’s work. Neither does the excuse it made for this narrowly targeted shut down of important public records efforts. Here’s Timothy Pratt, reporting for The Guardian:

Dean Peter B “Bo” Rutledge gave the order to clinic director Clare R Norins within weeks of the clinic’s 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 Georgia’s open records act, only to be ignored.

Ed Vogel, a researcher at Lucy Parsons Labs and a plaintiff, called the timing of the decision “alarming”, adding that Rutledge “has a responsibility to be completely transparent about why it was made”.

It’s a completely justifiable question. Why would a university that had previously given the law school and law clinic free rein to request records and litigate if necessary suddenly decide this was no longer acceptable? The plaintiff is correct: the university had an obligation to be “completely transparent” about this sudden change of course.

Unfortunately, this ain’t it. And it appears Dean Rutledge put law clinic director Clare Norins in the unenviable position of doing the dean’s dirty work for him:

Norins told plaintiffs in a 5 April Microsoft Teams meeting that the law school clinic was stopping all open records work because the school itself “is subject to open records requests, thus creating a conflict of interest”, said Matt Scott, an editor at the ACPC.

That’s not a conflict of interest. The university retains its own counsel, rather than using law clinic legal reps, during public records litigation. Even if Clare Norins was doing double duty, it still wouldn’t be conflict of interest because one set of litigation was being pursued against an outside government agency and any litigation rising out of the school’s refusal to hand over requested records would be defensive and obviously would not involve the same party (the Atlanta PD) the law clinic legal rep was engaged in litigation against.

This explanation is bullshit. And that’s made extremely clear by additional reporting by The Guardian’s Pratt:

The police foundation’s attorney in the lawsuit is Harold Melton, a former Georgia supreme court chief justice who graduated from UGA and now teaches at the school.

There’s your conflict of interest. If anyone should be commanded to step back, it should be the professor who’s currently defending the non-profit, rather than the school, in litigation brought by the school against the foundation. If anyone’s conflicted, it’s this guy. And his efforts run contrary to the overriding concern: the public interest. He’s trying to keep records out of the public’s hand, all while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck from the school while doing double-duty as a (presumably paid) legal rep for the Police Foundation.

This further statement — this time made by the dean himself — doesn’t offer any more clarification.

Rutledge later sent the Guardian a statement asserting that the move was “part of ongoing efforts to align the First Amendment Clinic’s activities more closely with the institution’s educational mission”.

That makes no sense. Part of educating potential lawyers about the First Amendment is engaging them in activities that involve the First Amendment, like public records requests and their ensuing lawsuits. Telling them to stop doing this sort of thing perhaps more “closely aligns” the law school’s First Amendment clinic with the University of Georgia’s “educational mission,” but only if the “mission” involves less “education” and more implicit instruction on the ins and outs of the good ol’ boy system.