Can a government-supported institution of higher learning claim First Amendment protection for speech it deliberately conceals from the public? That key question will be decided by retired Arlington Judge Paul Sheridan, now presiding over a precedent-setting case in Prince William Circuit Court involving the University of Virginia’s continued refusal to hand over 12,000 emails by former UVA climatologist Michael Mann requested three years ago by Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act.

No, says David Schnare, director of the Charlottesville-based American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center, who maintains that UVA is really seeking “a right to secret speech” because “the First Amendment only applies to speech intended to reach, or actually made in, a public forum.”