A Circuit Court judge on Wednesday overturned the dismissal of a lawsuit filed earlier this year alleging that members of the Spotsylvania School Board violated Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act.
The case was dismissed in July by the Spotsylvania General District Court, and attorneys for the plaintiff, Courtland High School graduate Makaila Keyes, and the School Board were in court Tuesday morning for a hearing on Keyes’s appeal of the dismissal.
Circuit Court Judge Ricardo Rigual found that Keyes—who is being represented by Fred and Jenna Edwards—has standing to claim that “rights and privileges” granted to her by FOIA were denied when School Board members went into a closed session at their Jan. 10 meeting without first holding a public vote to enter into the session.
The closed session in question resulted in the firing without cause of former superintendent Scott Baker.
People are also reading…
Jeremy Capps, attorney for the School Board, argued at the hearing Tuesday that since the closed meeting was exempt from FOIA for a legitimate reason—discussion of personnel—Keyes does not have any rights that were denied.
In his opinion, however, Rigual pointed to Virginia Code section 2.2-3700, which states: “All public records and meetings shall be presumed open, unless an exemption is properly invoked.”
“The procedure outlined for a public body to overcome the presumption that its meetings are public must be followed, and any exception to this presumption must be properly invoked,” Rigual wrote. “The petitioner correctly asserts that [Virginia Code] setting forth the procedure for a closed meeting is a right or privilege conferred by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.”
Because board members did not follow procedure and hold an affirmative vote to go into the closed session, they did not properly invoke an exception to FOIA, and therefore Keyes can claim that her rights under the Act were denied to her, Rigual found.
There will be a trial in Circuit Court on this claim, Jenna Edwards told The Free Lance–Star Thursday.
Also in his ruling, Rigual sustained the dismissal of another claim in Keyes’s petition, which is that the School Board violated FOIA by conducting a closed session that did not appear on the posted agenda for the meeting.
Rigual found that “no relevant provision” of FOIA requires public meetings to have agendas or requires that a posted agenda be followed.
“Petitioners suggestion that the spirit of Virginia’s FOIA would be best served if local governing bodies, at public meetings, only considered matters on appearing on a previously published agenda must be addressed to the General Assembly,” Rigual wrote.
Edwards said Keyes will appeal this dismissal.
Rigual also sustained the dismissal of Keyes’ third claim, which is that the board violated FOIA by following a substantially different agenda than the one made available to the public in advance.
He noted, however, that FOIA does require that if there is an agenda, it must be made available to the public at the same time it is made available to members of a public body.
Rigual’s ruling permits Keyes to amend her claim to allege that the altered agenda was never made available to the public, which Edwards said she plans to do.