By Karen Sloan
(Reuters) – A U.S. House of Representatives committee on Thursday dropped its probe for information from Northwestern University over its law school’s representation of pro-Palestinian protestors.
A lawyer for the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, Matthew Berry, said during a court hearing in Chicago federal court that the committee was no longer seeking information from the university regarding its legal clinics’ budgets, policies and other information it requested in a March 27 letter to the school.
Legal clinics, which are housed and funded by law schools, enable law students to work on actual cases under the supervision of an attorney.
The investigation appeared to be the first Congressional inquiry of a law school’s client representation and sparked concern among academics that it would have a chilling effect on the cases clinics take on.
U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo at Thursday’s hearing was expected to consider a request for a temporary restraining order against the committee and the university sought by two Northwestern law clinical professors to stop the university from providing clinic data to the committee. Bucklo said that request was now moot.
In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, plaintiffs Sheila Bedi and Lynn Cohn said the committee’s request violated their First Amendment rights and would undermine the clinic’s work.
A committee spokesperson did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment on why it is no longer investigating Northwestern’s law clinics.
A Northwestern University spokesperson declined to comment on Thursday but said earlier that the university had intended to cooperate with the investigation.
The committee’s March 27 letter said the school had supported “illegal, antisemitic conduct,” citing one Northwestern clinic’s work to represent organizers of a pro-Palestine protest in Chicago in April last year that resulted in 40 arrests.
Thursday was the deadline to provide the information the committee sought.
An attorney for the plaintiffs, John Loevy of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said his clients are grateful that the committee “reconsidered its position.”
Read more:
US House probes Northwestern’s law clinic over representation of pro-Palestine protestors
US cancels $400 million in grants, contracts to Columbia University over antisemitism allegations
(Reporting by Karen Sloan; Editing by Leigh Jones and Stephen Coates)
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