A version of the following article appeared in the Aug. 12, 2026, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.
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Your right to know: Why The Charlotte Ledger is going to federal court to contest a secret lawsuit settlement
Bell tower at UNC Chapel Hill (Photo by Gene Gallin on Unsplash)
by Tony Mecia
The Charlotte Ledger was founded in 2019 on the belief that people in the Charlotte area deserve reliable information about the world around them.
Today, I’m happy to report one of the ways we are making good on advancing that belief. The Charlotte Ledger, along with two other media organizations, has taken the unusual step of going to court to request that a public agency do what we believe state law requires – being transparent about its operations and how it spends public money. At stake is your right to know how your government operates.
Since 2023, The Ledger has been almost alone in covering the odd case of a UNC Chapel Hill student from Morganton, who was kicked out of school after a campus disciplinary panel found him guilty of sexual misconduct. Alleging irregularities in how a campus tribunal handled his case, he sued, using a pseudonym – which is also unusual, although a federal judge allowed it. The Ledger broke the story of the lawsuit because we regularly check court filings.
We followed the case as it wound its way through the federal court in Asheville, where it was filed. The case wasn’t trying to determine the student’s guilt or innocence but hinged on how UNC conducted its investigation and hearing, which the student said unfairly led to his expulsion and revocation of his prestigious Morehead-Cain full scholarship.
This spring, UNC and the student reached a settlement of the suit, according to court documents filed by the two sides. But they didn’t disclose how the suit was resolved. Did UNC pay the student off, and with how much money? Did they allow him to reenroll? Did they acknowledge that they erred and apologize? We, and the public, have no idea.
This is one of those cases where neither side benefits from publicity. The student wants to go about his life without being linked to sexual misconduct when someone Googles his name. UNC would prefer to avoid headlines about how it bungled the adjudication of a disciplinary case and perhaps how it agreed to readmit someone to campus who a panel found guilty of forcing himself on women without their consent.
State law doesn’t allow state agencies like UNC to “enter into any settlement of any such suit, arbitration or proceeding if the settlement provides that its terms and conditions shall be confidential,” except for medical malpractice cases against hospitals.
Yet the two sides agreed to keep the terms of the settlement under wraps anyway, and federal Judge Martin Reidinger agreed to order it sealed. Although there are plenty of details of the allegations in publicly available court filings, Reidinger found that releasing the terms of the settlement agreement would jeopardize the privacy of the student and his accusers.
Last month, The Ledger, the UNC student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel and the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Journal asked the judge to reconsider and to disclose the terms of the settlement. (We’re not seeking the disclosure of the student’s name.) UNC’s lawyers, as lawyers do, have thrown up all kinds of objections about why it’s ill-advised, improper and illegal to do what all other state and local agencies routinely do, which is share the terms of settlements with the public.
The judge will rule at some point. The outcome will have no material financial effect on The Ledger either way. Contrary to a popular anti-media talking point, getting “clicks” on headlines doesn’t pay the bills (at least not ours). And we have plenty of other things to write about and to focus our attention on.
But it will have an effect on your understanding of the world we live in – on this one case in particular, of course, but also potentially the next time a government agency wants to shield information from the public by using questionable legal interpretations.
The Ledger and other local media run into roadblocks in trying to get information all the time, from the city of Charlotte refusing to release records on properties it considers public nuisances (saying they are confidential police records even though the City Council has discussed the issue) to the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles telling us it’s nigh impossible to release an anonymized database of vehicle registrations, even though they gave us the exact same database without objection six years ago (outdated computers, they say). It’s a frustrating part of our job, and the only recourse we typically have is to start involving lawyers.
On this issue, we’re contesting UNC’s self-serving inclination toward secrecy. We think that matters. The public deserves to know what its government is up to.
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You can read about The Ledger’s court filing in the Carolina Journal, as well as UNC’s response.