Judge sides with Lexington 1 in public records lawsuit brought by school board member

The Lexington 1 school district mostly followed public records laws despite claims from a school board member, a judge ruled recently.

The case, brought by board member Jada Garris, claimed district officials violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act, which encourages government transparency. After the trial in late October, Judge William McKinnon ruled Nov. 22 in favor of the district on four out of the five allegations.

Garris was found to be in the right on the fifth allegation, which was over how board members entered into executive session in November 2017, a year before she was elected to the board.

During that meeting, the board entered into executive session behind closed doors at the district office without announcing it to the public in open session. By law, public officials must vote in public before entering executive sessions. McKinnon ruled it to be a violation of South Carolina sunshine laws.

Lexington 1’s attorneys have asked McKinnon to reconsider his ruling on that issue, according to district spokesperson Mary Beth Hill. Garris’ attorneys are also asking the judge to reconsider his ruling on the remaining issues she raised.

In her lawsuit, Garris, a former bus driver and longtime critic of Lexington 1, also accused the school district of failing to post agendas 24 hours before three school board meetings, as the law requires.

During the trial, Hill testified that she often updates agendas after posting them to the district’s website. Because of that, she said, the agenda documents online could show they were created later than they actually were.

McKinnon found agendas in two of the three cases Garris included in her lawsuit to have been timely. The third, a special called meeting on June 15, 2017, was held “solely to approve the hiring of new employees,” so the public meeting notice was sufficient to satisfy legal requirements, he wrote.

Garris also alleged that the board held its Dec. 6, 2016, meeting in an adjoining boardroom instead of in the auditorium, where the public notice and agenda said the meeting would be.

McKinnon found the Dec. 6, 2016, meeting blunder to be “at most, a technical violation of FOIA,” writing in his analysis that “members of the public were invited to attend the training sessions in the boardroom, and some did. Further, the door between the boardroom and the auditorium was open.”

“The Court finds that if moving part of a meeting from one room to an adjoining room in the same building that connects through a door, and leaving the door open, is even a FOIA violation, it is at most a technical violation and the Board substantially complied with FOIA,” McKinnon wrote in his ruling.

The school district said it has, and will continue to, follow public records laws. While it typically will not discuss ongoing legal matters, the district said in a statement it is pleased that the court “overwhelmingly agreed with and ruled in the district’s favor” on all but one of the allegations.

“We believe that our work to provide the year’s meeting dates to media, to link to the current agenda in several locations on our website, to post the agenda on front doors, to video record meetings, and to broadcast not just the entire meeting but individual presentations on an interactive agenda goes far beyond what other entities do for notification and the requirements of the law,” the statement said.

This legal skirmish between Garris and Lexington 1 was years in the making, though it was not the first time the freshman board member has butted heads with district leaders. Garris initially sought out attorney Taylor Smith after he said the district failed to provide her with public documents in the time frame set by South Carolina law.

The case was amended through the months, as Lexington 1 turned over some of the records Garris requested, including an audio recording from a board retreat and financial documents.

“She is still the prevailing party of her FOIA suit ... because the district agreed to supply responsive records to several requests for information only after she sued them,” Smith wrote in an email. “Those open records violations were not considered at trial because the district effectively admitted to those violations before the proceeding occurred.”

Smith has represented The State Media Co. and the S.C. Press Association in other cases.

The district’s behavior also shifted noticeably after litigation began, Garris said: Agendas were more detailed, meetings were live streamed, public records requests were handled by one of the district’s attorneys and the school board started meetings with public session in the auditorium, instead of starting in the boardroom.

“By demanding more transparency and having access to data, we are one step closer to meeting the needs of students and reversing inequities within our district. No one should have to take a public agency to court to convince them that public documents are, in fact, public,” Garris said in a statement.

Garris and her attorneys, in addition to seeking a different ruling from McKinnon, want Lexington 1 to repay more than $40,000 in attorney’s fees. A hearing to address the two parties’ motions is set for late January.

This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 5:00 AM.