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UNC-Chapel Hill will not have to release any part of its investigation into its School of Civic Life and Leadership, under a court ruling against The News & Observer and five other media outlets.
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The lawyer for the news outlets is calling it the “most inexplicable and unexpected decision that I have encountered in almost 50 years of litigating public records cases.”
UNC spent $1.2 million investigating allegations of leadership misconduct and improper hiring practices at its School of Civic Life and Leadership. Then it said no one would get to see the results. That’s because, according to Chancellor Lee Roberts, “the entire thing is personnel information.” The school also cited attorney-client privilege and preservation of the university’s culture as reasons for withholding the 400-page report from public view.
In April, a group of news outlets sued for the report’s release, citing state public records law.
A Superior Court judge in Orange County, John Morris, granted UNC’s motion to dismiss the case Thursday, after he said he would read the report himself. Morris didn’t provide reasoning for the decision.
Hugh Stevens, the lawyer representing the media outlets, said he is dumbfounded by the ruling.
“Given the applicable law, it is unfathomable to me that every page, every line, and every word of a 400-page investigation that was conducted at significant public expense and that concerns a manifestly public matter – i.e., the establishment of a new and controversial school at our flagship university – is exempt from public disclosure,” Stevens wrote.
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“Judge Morris did not disclose why he believes that the SCiLL report is completely beyond the reach of the North Carolina Public Records Act. Since we, unlike both him and the University’s lawyers, have never had the opportunity to see the report, we cannot cogently comment on the rationale for his terse but sweeping secrecy ruling.”
The School of Civic Life and Leadership, known as SCiLL, has faced controversy since its inception in 2023. It was envisioned as a haven for intellectual diversity on a liberal campus. But its conservative bent has made it unpopular on campus, and serious infighting and allegations have caused near complete turnover in its faculty ranks.
At the center of many of those allegations is the school’s leader, dean Jed Atkins, who the university says initiated the investigation himself. At the conclusion of the investigation, the university said it left leadership “fully confident in the continued strength and success of SCiLL under [Atkins’] leadership.”
The law firm that led the investigation, K&L Gates, has now been hired to conduct the investigation into football general manager Mike Lombardi.
By the end of the SCiLL investigation, lead investigator Nate Huff was charging UNC $1,170 per hour for his services.
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UNC told The News & Observer it does not have a comment on the decision.
This story was originally published August 21, 2026 at 10:07 AM.