The State asks SC appeals court to reinstate lawsuit against Midlands school district
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The State Media Co. has asked the state Court of Appeals to reinstate a lawsuit that alleged a local school district violated South Carolina’s open meetings laws. A judged dismissed the lawsuit last year on procedural grounds.
In a filing on Monday, attorney Billy McGee argues Judge Alison Lee incorrectly used a statutory requirement for a quick hearing to penalize The State’s senior editor in dismissing the suit against the Lexington-Richland 5 school district.
In her October ruling, Lee dismissed the case based on the fact a hearing on The State’s request for a summary judgment was not held within 10 days. She did not address the merits of the lawsuit in her dismissal.
“This interpretation added a new and substantial obligation on parties seeking to enforce a (Freedom of Information Act) claim where no such language existed,” McGee argues in the appeal.
An editor of The State newspaper, Paul Osmundson, filed the suit against the district in August 2021, alleging the district violated the state’s Freedom of Information law in its approval of a settlement for a former superintendent who resigned her post.
Lexington-Richland 5’s former superintendent, Christina Melton, received $226,368 in a settlement from the district after she resigned her position in August 2021.
The State’s lawsuit alleges the school board approved that settlement illegally behind closed doors. The suit also sought to require that meetings of school board officers be open to the public.
After The State filed its lawsuit, the Lexington-Richland 5 school board approved the settlement agreement with Melton in a public vote, nearly two months after the superintendent announced her resignation. The district also began announcing its board officers’ meetings ahead of time and opening portions of them to the public.
Under state law in a Freedom of Information complaint, “a hearing must be held within ten days of the service on all parties and a scheduling order to conclude the action must be held within six months,” Lee wrote in a short court order dismissing the suit. “In this current matter, no hearing was held within the allotted timeframe. Therefore, the Motion to Dismiss is dispositive and the court need not determine the merits of the Summary Judgment claims.”
The appeal argues that Osmundson has no ability to schedule a hearing on his suit, and that the statutory language actually requires the chief administrative judge of the circuit court to schedule the initial hearing.
As a result, the court “punished Osmundson, the litigant, for the failure of the chief administrative judge to timely schedule an initial hearing, something only the court has the authority to do.”
In a June hearing on the lawsuit, Lee told attorneys that the newspaper cannot “file a complaint and then expect the Court to realize you’re asking for injunctive relief or some type of hearing in order for that to take place,” but added that “many attorneys probably don’t know that.”
If allowed to stand, the ruling would place the burden on anyone seeking to enforce the Freedom of Information Act to get a hearing scheduled or risk having their complaint thrown out, perhaps by seeking a writ from the S.C. Supreme Court in each case, the appeal argues. It may even create an unequal application of justice if the chief judge in one circuit is simply quicker to schedule hearings than in another.
The purpose of the 10-day rule, the appeal argues, is to ensure FOIA requests are dealt with promptly, rather than impose grounds for a litigant’s claims to be dismissed.
Lee’s ruling also ignores the conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the appeal argues, since at the time many courtroom operations were still curtailed and the Supreme Court had given judges wide latitude in scheduling and conducting hearings.
This story was originally published April 10, 2023 at 4:22 PM.
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