University of Michigan Claims Open Meetings Act Unconstitutional

As a defense to a lawsuit alleging that a February 3 meeting violated the Open Meetings Act, the University of Michigan Board of Regents is asserting that the law is unconstitutional. The meeting was allegedly held to discuss an NCAA probe into the university football program, and the school asserts the meeting was closed for attorney-client privileged communications.

The university's brief argues the Open Meetings Act is an "unconstitutional infringement upon the Regents' autonomy and authority over the general supervision of the University of Michigan."

Read more about the lawsuit and defense here.

Kansas City School District won't release mold details

Kansas City School officials have said that mold was found at Knotts Elementary School but won't release the results of an air-quality study done at the school, the Kansas City Star reported. The teachers union has sued the district for the records. The district provided The Kansas City Star with some records but none that revealed the results of air-quality studies. The Sunshine Law request for air-quality reports on Knotts was denied, according to the district’s legal office, because “they constitute legal work product and are subject to the attorney-client privilege.”

The Kansas City School District has problems with mold and air contaminants, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year testing and cleaning some of its buildings.

But that’s not what frustrates teachers the most.

It’s how sparingly the district shares what it knows.

Teachers at Trailwoods Elementary School waited months before learning why their school was cleaned over the summer. And teachers at Knotts Elementary still don’t know the degree of air contamination that had them scrambling out of their school a week before classes started.

More here.

Attorney-client privilege wins records case

The Ohio Supreme Court agreed with the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, which argued that investigative reports prepared for public agencies by private lawyers are not public record, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

In a setback for advocates of public records, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled today that reports by private attorneys for government agencies are not public records.

The court's unanimous ruling came in a sordid case out of Toledo. That city's newspaper, The Blade, filed a public-records request for an investigative report by a private attorney for the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority that looked into an extramarital relationship between the president of the port authority and a lobbyist who did business with the authority.

The authority's private lawyer prepared a report investigating the matter and turned it over to the authority's board, which fired the wayward official.

More here.

Washington Supremes Reaffirm Attorney-Client Exemption

A sharply divided state Supreme Court reaffirmed attorney-client privilege exemptions from the state's Public Records Act, and said government agencies can challenge records requests in court before releasing any information.

In a 5-4 ruling published Thursday, the high court said documents relating to a child's peanut-allergy death while on a school field trip could be withheld from The Spokesman-Review newspaper of Spokane because of exemptions for attorney-client privilege and attorney work product.

"We conclude that the vast majority of the documents at issue here are protected from disclosure because they are handwritten notes or memoranda about witness interviews created by the legal team, making them protected work product," Justice Bobbe Bridge wrote.

The ruling also found that state or local government agencies can seek a judgment in superior court over whether a particular record is subject to disclosure.

"It's not a good day for public records in the state of Washington," said Duane Swinton, the attorney who represented the newspaper in the case.

The newspaper sought witness accounts of events leading to the death of Nathan Walters, a Logan Elementary third-grader who died on a school field trip in 2001.

More here.