The GOP-controlled House Education and the Workforce Committee withdrew a request for records on Northwestern University’s law clinics after its leaders filed a lawsuit Wednesday.
“The committee is not seeking these documents anymore. Period,” House general counsel Matthew Berry said at a court hearing Thursday.
Sheila Bedi, director of the university’s Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic, and Lynn Cohn, co-director of Northwestern’s Center on Negotiation, Mediation and Restorative Justice, filed the suit against the university and the congressional committee Wednesday afternoon.
The March 27 letter raised concerns about representing anti-Israel protesters, among others. The lawsuit challenged the request for information on the clinic’s budget and clients, arguing it was unconstitutional.
The suit also came after the Trump administration paused $790 million of federal funding to Northwestern.
U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood hastily scheduled the Thursday morning hearing to decide whether to block the noon EDT deadline for the school to comply with the committee’s demands. But with the new development, Wood found the professors’ request for a temporary restraining order immediately blocking the deadline was effectively moot.
“It seems to me that the emergent nature of the issues raised by the motion are no more,” the judge said.
Wood is an appointee of former President Obama who was assigned to oversee the motion because she was on emergency duty Thursday. A different judge is set to handle the case moving forward.
At the hearing, Berry stressed that the committee was no longer seeking the documents.
“I want to be absolutely clear that the formal request has been withdrawn,” Berry said. “This is not a cover for and there is not going to be any informal, behind-the-scenes request for the same documents.”
“The Letter reflects a bare desire to harm Plaintiffs for their association with ‘left-wing’ causes that the Committee does not like and for the protected speech reflected in their ‘progressive,’ ‘left’ advocacy,” the lawsuit said.
