UNC fights disclosing sex assault reports in NC Supreme Court
The state’s highest court heard arguments Tuesday over whether UNC-Chapel Hill should release records of sexual assaults on campus, a case that pits student privacy against the need for public information.
Four media companies — The Daily Tar Heel campus newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, the Herald-Sun and Capitol Broadcasting, which owns WRAL, all seek the name, offense and punishment for any student found responsible for sexual misconduct since 2007.
Their lawsuit dates to a 2016 public records request, which the university denied.
Last year, the state Court of Appeals ruled against former UNC Chancellor Carol Folt and public records director Gavin Young, requiring the state’s flagship university to disclose the records.
But the university filed petitions with the N.C. Supreme Court, which agreed to hold a hearing. On Tuesday, Special Deputy Attorney General Stephanie Brennan told justices that turning over such records would have a “chilling effect.”
UNC has discretion over whether or not to release the records, she said, an option granted by the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which protects privacy of student records.
She cited a sexual assault epidemic on campuses nationwide, and said making names public would discourage victims and witnesses from coming forward.
“This information should not be disclosed,” Brennan said. “It doesn’t improve the process by making it public.”
But Hugh Stevens, attorney for the media companies, said nobody has any interest in identifying victims. The crisis facing campuses over sexual assault makes releasing information crucial, he said.
Without it, he said, the public has no way to know whether UNC is following its commitment to ferret out and punish students who commit crimes. UNC has never acknowledged that a student has been found culpable of a sexual offense, nor has it disclosed its method of punishment, he said.
“How and to what extent is the university living up to that?” he asked. “We don’t know. ... What is the privacy interest in keeping secret the names of people who have committed heinous crimes on campus?”
FERPA makes most student records private, Stevens said, but it makes an exception for crimes of violence and unforced sex offenses, meaning UNC is not barred from making them public. The state’s Public Records Law requires the release of any information not made confidential by other statues.
No evidence exists to show sex crimes would go unreported if facts were made public, Stevens said. Rather, he added, victims feel emboldened by others coming forward, he argued.
Brennan bristled at the suggestion UNC is hiding anything.
“There is zero support for that in the record,” she said. “The university has been saying from day one, ‘This is about victims.’“
Justices are expected to make a decision within a few weeks to a few months.
This story was originally published August 27, 2019 at 3:33 PM.