Open Meetings Laws

What Is Required

Under open meetings laws, it generally is unlawful to have private or “secret” meetings; for school boards, it is also unlawful to have public meetings without providing proper notice to the public. Distinctions are often made as to what constitutes a “meeting” for purposes of being encompassed within the open meetings laws. Under California's Ralph M. Brown Act, for example, a “meeting” means “any congregation of a majority of the members of a [board] at the same time and place to hear, discuss, or deliberate upon any item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the [institution].” Statutes often carve out exceptions to allow a majority of board members to attend conferences, meetings of other public entities, community meetings, or ceremonies without complying with the open meetings laws.

Circumventing open meetings laws by convening “serial meetings” or by developing what is known as a “collective concurrence” by having an intermediary essentially poll the majority of board members on a particular issue would constitute a violation of open meetings laws. In other words, violations occur if board votes are somehow achieved outside the context of public meetings, even if a majority of a board is not actually meeting together in a secret fashion.

There are exceptions, however, when boards are permitted to meet privately, not in view of the public, in certain situations where they may convene in “closed” or “executive” session. These topics typically include the following: The board meets with its legal counsel to discuss, for example, pending or threatened litigation; the board meets with its labor negotiators to discuss strategies for dealing with an employee union; the board meets with its real property negotiators to discuss how much money the board might offer for a parcel of realty; meetings to discuss a security threat or to deal with employee appointment, discipline, or performance evaluation may also be closed. In these situations, a balance has been reached between the public's right to know about the business of the public entity, on one hand, and the privacy rights of public employees, the attorney-client privilege, the bargaining power of the public entity, or public safety, on the other.

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