Education
Congressional Committee Drops Northwestern Records Request After Law Professors File Suit
(WTTW News)
A congressional committee has dropped its request for budgets and personnel records from Northwestern University’s legal clinics after a pair of university law professors filed suit this week.
The U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee withdrew its records request during an emergency court hearing in Chicago on Thursday after Northwestern professors Sheila Bedi and Lynn Cohn sued the committee, claiming its investigation into the university’s law clinics violated their First Amendment rights.
“Every day, my students and I defend the constitutional rights of people targeted by state violence,” Bedi said in a statement. “I filed this suit to defend my clients’ rights to representation, my students’ rights to learn, and my right to teach. But today’s decision won’t stop the federal government’s attacks on universities and the legal profession.”
The committee last month launched an investigation into the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law after it provided free legal representation to pro-Palestinian protest organizers who temporarily shut down highway traffic to O’Hare Airport last year.
Claiming that doing so raises “serious questions,” the committee asked that Northwestern turn over budgets, a list of funders from the university’s legal clinics and Bedi’s personnel file by Thursday.
On Wednesday, more than 1,000 faculty members, alumni, students, attorneys and local community members signed letters calling for “solidarity and resistance” from Northwestern officials amid what they called “brazen, anti-democratic” attacks from the Trump administration.
On top of the House committee investigation, the U.S. Department of Education last month informed Northwestern and dozens of other universities they faced a potential funding freeze as part of its investigation into potential Title VI violations stemming from what it called “antisemitic harassment and discrimination.”
And on Tuesday, the Trump administration announced it would freeze $790 million in federal dollars that support Northwestern’s research and teaching.
“Educators and institutions must stand united to protect our students, our communities, and each other,” Bedi said in her statement. “For clinical legal educators, our work has never been more urgent. We teach, we advocate, and we stand with communities demanding justice. That’s why Congress is targeting us.”
