University settles in football lawsuit
By Andy Thomason | The Daily Tar Heel
After a two-year legal battle, the
University has agreed to a settlement with The Daily Tar Heel and seven other
media outlets, pledging to produce, among other records, unredacted
interview transcripts with UNC football players.
The University will release those
records to the outlets today, ending a contentious lawsuit that centered around the question of which of UNC’s student records are
public and which are protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy
Act.
In addition, the University will pay
the outlets $45,000 in legal fees.
The outlets sued the University in
October 2010 for all records relating to the NCAA’s investigation of its
football program, which began that summer.
But the University claimed that the
records in question were protected by FERPA.
Superior Court Judge Howard Manning
disagreed. In his first decision in April 2011, Manning ruled that the
University had to produce parking tickets for 11 student athletes and unredacted phone records for then-athletic director Dick Baddour, then-head coach Butch Davis and former assistant
coach John Blake.
But the outlets’ largest request —
for all documents related to the investigation — was addressed in September,
when Manning ruled broadly that records related to players’ misconduct, not
academics, should be released.
“FERPA does not provide a student
with an invisible cloak so that the student can remain hidden from public view
while enrolled at UNC,” Manning wrote in the order.
Records to be released included
statements of facts and player reinstatement requests — relating to
non-academic misconduct — sent by the University to the NCAA. Manning also
ordered the University to release the redacted portions of its response to the
NCAA’s notice of allegations unrelated to academics.
The 30-day deadline to comply with
Manning’s order is today.
The settlement comes with
conditions. First, the media outlets cannot post the student athlete interview
transcripts to the Internet but are not limited in their ability to report on
and quote from the transcripts.
Additionally, the outlets are
prohibited from assisting other parties in obtaining the transcripts. But if a
third party does gain access to the transcripts, the outlets are permitted to
post the transcripts online.
The settlement brings to a close yet
another chapter of the football scandal that claimed the jobs of Blake, Davis, Baddour and, eventually,
Chancellor Holden Thorp, who lent his signature to the settlement on Thursday.
Contact the desk editor at
university@dailytarheel.com.