Judge sides with The State in school board open meetings lawsuit
A judge has sided with The State newspaper in a four-year-long open meeting lawsuit against a Midlands school district.
Judge Daniel Coble issued a ruling Friday siding with a request for summary judgment against Lexington-Richland 5 in a case related to a secret payout agreement the school board signed in a closed-door meeting with a former superintendent to get her to resign. The State argued the agreement violated the open meeting requirements of South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, and Coble agreed.
“This Court finds that there is no genuine issue of material fact in dispute: the Defendant violated the Freedom of Information Act,” Coble wrote in an order Friday. “Additionally, this Court will not ignore the FOIA violations in this case because the issues may be moot,” he wrote, responding to school district attorney Ward Bradley’s argument that the school board voted in open session to approve the agreement with former Superintendent Christina Melton after the lawsuit was filed.
“Our General Assembly has found ‘that it is vital in a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner so that citizens shall be advised of the performance of public officials and of the decisions that are reached in public activity and in the formulation of public policy,’ the judge wrote. “And the purpose of South Carolina’s FOIA law is ‘to make it possible for citizens, or their representatives, to learn and report fully the activities of their public officials at a minimum cost or delay to the persons seeking access to public documents or meetings.’”
Coble wrote that he will consider issuing a draft order to be submitted by Joel Collins and Patrick Quinn, the attorneys representing Paul Osmundson, a former senior editor at The State, who brought the suit.
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