Dean of law school orders first amendment clinic to curtail core work, including on Atlanta Police Foundation case

The dean at the University of Georgia’s 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 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”.

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.