Ala. agencies can circumvent open meeting law via serial meetings with less than quorum, court rules

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled narrowly this month that public agencies could circumvent the state open-meetings law by holding a series of meetings with less than a quorum of members -- a familiar ploy that can be hard to prevent and discover, even when state law forbids it, as the Kentucky New Era of Hopkinsville wrote today.

In a lawsuit against the Montgomery Public Schools, the Alabama high court voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court ruling. "The court ruled that although the Board of Education formed three special committees covered by the Open Meetings Act, no meeting of the committee occurred because what they discussed was going to be voted upon later by the entire Board and not the committee," reports the June issue of AlaPressa, the newsletter of the Alabama Press Association. For a PDF of the court's decision, click here.