Open meetings

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear arguments about the constitutionality of the criminal sanction provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act, ending the long-running legal battle over a statute that prohibits government officials from talking about public business in private.

The Court also declined to hear a case involving a First Amendment defense to a penalty for disclosing sealed records.

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a lower court’s decision that the open meetings provisions of the state’s Freedom of Information Act is unconstitutional, stating that questions about how the law applies to changes in technology and other concerns should be taken to the legislature, not the court.

But the Supreme Court also upheld the circuit court’s ruling that local government officials did not violate the Act when an administrator met with city board members in a series of one-on-one meetings.

A Texas law that permits the imposition of criminal sanctions against elected officials who meet in secret does not violate the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Justice reaffirmed in a letter this week that public meetings are open to the press, after accusations that one of its attorneys told a Louisiana reporter that he could not quote or record her during a public meeting, citing "special rules."

E-mail correspondence among school board members prior to the controversial closing of a public elementary school did not constitute secret meetings that violate Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

A Texas appellate court ruled that a state public accounting licensing board that penalized three accountants involved in the Enron scandal properly conducted a public vote on the sanctions in accordance with the state open meetings law, even though some of the deliberations had been conducted in executive session.