FEDERAL COURT, July 9 – Purdue
University Global has formally opposed Inner City Press's
motion to unseal the summary judgment record in the case
of a law student suing the online school over her
dismissal weeks before what she says was to have been her
August 25, 2026 graduation.
The university's brief calls the case
"already far more complicated than its subject matter
warrants" and argues Inner City Press, a "non-party media
organization with no direct stake in the outcome," should
not be permitted to intervene at all.
Buried in Purdue Global's own opposition is
a concession that undercuts it. The university states it
"claims no institutional privacy interest" in the sealed
exhibits and "does not object to public disclosure if
Plaintiff consents." That is the entirety of its case for
secrecy — not a privacy or competitive interest of its
own, but a supposition about what its own former student
wants.
The supposition appears to be wrong.
After Inner City Press's reply was filed,
the plaintiff emailed a response — copying both opposing
counsel and the presiding judge's chambers — that leaves
little doubt where she stands. "I want the records in this
case completely unsealed so that the public can see the
discrimination firsthand," she wrote, pointing
specifically to an exhibit she says shows "the exact
dynamics used against me." She described herself as
disabled and currently homeless, said she emptied her bank
account to travel to federal court in Hammond, Indiana, to
fight her dismissal, and wrote that "racist instructors
have stripped" her scheduled graduation "away from me" —
allegations that are hers, disputed by the defendants, and
not yet tested by the Court. "Because I am currently
unable to e-file and am terrified of doing anything that
might anger the judge, the press is my only real outlet to
expose what is happening," she wrote, calling it "a
classic David vs. Goliath battle" and asking that her
account "give a voice to my fight."
And many fights are necessary.
Magistrate Judge Abizer Zanzi denied Inner City Press's
motion to unseal educational records in the Purdue Global
case on procedural grounds alone, catching a real
inconsistency along the way: the original July 17 filing
was brought in the name of "Inner City Press, a news
organization," not the "Matthew Russell Lee, a journalist
for Inner City Press, appearing in his personal capacity"
framing this outlet has used successfully in comparable
filings elsewhere this year — a correction that appeared
only later, in the reply brief, which the Court held could
not cure the original defect. That Federal courts all over
the country have correctly accepted just these filings is
no matter, in this Court.
The Court also noted the motion arrived by
email to chambers rather than through the Clerk's Office,
an outcome this outlet has more often had success than its
opposite in other districts this year, but not this
time. What happened next is the part worth reading
past the denial for. Rather than simply closing the
matter, Judge Zanzi insists that the Court "takes
seriously the Seventh Circuit's admonition that federal
court proceedings are 'presumptively open to public
scrutiny' and must 'be conducted in public to the maximum
extent consistent with respecting trade secrets, the
identities of undercover agents, and other facts that
should be held in confidence,'" citing Hicklin Eng'g, L.C.
v. Bartell, 439 F.3d 346, 348 (7th Cir. 2006). Could
have fooled me...
Noting that Defendants have disclaimed any
interest of their own in keeping the records sealed, the
Court reasoned that "any remaining privacy interest in
maintaining these documents under seal belongs to
Plaintiff and Plaintiff alone." The order directs
Nicole Lawtone-Bowles to file a Notice with the Court no
later than September 25, 2026, stating whether she
consents to unsealing her own educational records at DE 8
and DE 67, Exhibits K, L, and M, and, if she does not
consent, to state the basis for continued sealing, given
that Defendants have disclaimed any institutional privacy
interest of their own. What she will say is not something
this outlet will guess at in advance. But of the whole
process, we have our view. Watch this site.
Inner City Press, we report what we find.
Start with what Purdue Global actually is.
In 2018, Purdue's public university system paid one dollar
for the for-profit Kaplan University and rebranded it
Purdue University Global — while signing a 30-year
contract keeping Kaplan Inc. as the exclusive operator of
the school's actual, non-academic business, including
marketing. Internal contract terms, obtained by The
Century Foundation through a federal records request
Purdue had itself resisted, locked in Kaplan's existing
admissions standards and barred policies that could
"negatively impact enrollment growth."
Purdue Global spent roughly $100 million on
advertising in a single early year. Two U.S. Senators
wrote directly to Purdue's president over the school's
continued use of forced arbitration clauses stripping
students of the right to sue — the same right
Lawtone-Bowles is now, unusually, actually exercising, pro
se, from a courtroom in Hammond, Indiana. More
directly relevant to her case: Purdue University Global is
named, specifically, in the Department of Education's
roughly $6 billion Sweet v. Cardona settlement, which
grants automatic student-loan relief to borrowers who
attended a list of schools the Department itself
determined showed "strong signs of substantial
misconduct... whether credibly alleged or in some cases
proven."
The Kaplan history is worth dwelling on,
because none of it is disputed or alleged — it comes from
the company's own regulatory record and from a public
university's own contract. Kaplan University was, before
the Purdue deal, already a recognizable name in
for-profit-college scrutiny: Harvard Law School's Legal
Services Center issued a 2017 report detailing complaints
from veterans and active-duty servicemembers that Kaplan
had misled them about program costs, academic quality, and
whether their credits would transfer elsewhere. Florida's
Attorney General closed an investigation into Kaplan the
same era after the company agreed to change what
regulators called "misleading" marketing to prospective
students.
When Purdue's board announced the
acquisition in 2017, faculty were not consulted
beforehand; one professor described the reaction in the
room as "stunned silence." The structure Purdue
agreed to preserve is what makes the "public university"
label do more work than it should. Century Foundation's
records request uncovered a "Policy Guide" governing the
Purdue-Kaplan relationship that locked in Kaplan's
pre-existing admissions standards — standards developed
under for-profit incentive structures that had already
drawn regulatory scrutiny — and explicitly barred any
policy that could "negatively impact enrollment growth."
New students at Purdue Global are still bound to mandatory
arbitration and class-action waivers as a condition of
enrollment, a practice virtually unheard of at public
universities and common at the for-profit schools the
public sector is supposed to be an alternative to;
Senators Durbin and Brown wrote to Purdue's Board of
Trustees in 2018 specifically to ask that this practice
end, and, per their own follow-up letter, received no
response for nearly a year.
None of that history required
Lawtone-Bowles's lawsuit to surface. It was already
sitting in the public record, describing the institution
she says stripped away her law degree weeks before
graduation — the institution now asking a federal court to
let it keep its own explanation for that decision
sealed.
Inner City Press has replied. Watch this
site.
