A former employee sued school board members alleging that two of their closed board meetings violated the Open Meetings Act. In the first meeting, the school board voted to go into closed session “to discuss an employee matter, specifically the reclassification of employment” without giving a statutory citation. The court found that the Act does not require a statutory citation; it requires “a citation to the specific exception contained in” the Act. Said the court: “By referring to an ‘employee matter’ and ‘reclassification of employment,’ defendants adequately identified the exception in section 2(c)(1). An additional citation to the statutory subsection might have been helpful but was not required. Citing the exception was sufficient.”

The second meeting being scrutinized violated the Open Meetings Act because the reason given for going into closed session – “litigation” – was not supported by required information. Said the court: “The ‘litigation’ exception is a forked path. If the litigation has been filed and is pending, the public body need only announce that in the proposed closed meeting, it will discuss litigation that has been filed and is pending. If the litigation has not yet been filed, the public body must (1) find that the litigation is probable or imminent and (2) record and enter into the minutes the basis for that finding. Evidently, the legislature intended to prevent public bodies from using the distant possibility of litigation as a pretext for closing their meetings to the public.” The court remanded the case to the trial court for a remedy determination.

Two candidates challenged the election results for local school council (LSC) members of a Chicago public school. These elections are governed by rules developed by the Chicago Board of Education rather than the Election Code. The challengers complained of the improper use of school resources as well as improper distribution of campaign literature on election day. The hearing officer for the Chicago Board of Education conducted a hearing in accordance with the Board’s rules. In reviewing his decision, the Illinois Court of Appeals found no error in his conclusion that the facts demonstrated no “substantial and uncured election violations.”

IASB filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the district to no avail – the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reconsider its decision that a dismissed superintendent was denied procedural due process rights and that the school board members were not entitled to qualified immunity.

The school board dismissed the superintendent for cause before his contract expired. In the pre-termination hearing, it provided him an opportunity to address the board. The superintendent, believing the process was unfair, refused to participate in the hearing. The Seventh Circuit Court rejected the district’s argument that the superintendent waived his due process rights and held that the board should have given him full trial-type procedural due process. The availability of a post-termination lawsuit for breach of contract was insufficient, according to the Seventh Circuit, to protect his “present entitlement” to his contractual interests.

Most surprisingly, however, was the Seventh Circuit’s opinion that a reasonable board member would have known his or her conduct was unlawful because the superintendent’s procedural due process rights were clearly established. This finding precipitated the court’s denial of qualified immunity to the individual board members.