News & Commentary

In testimony submitted at a public hearing yesterday by the RI ACLU and Cooperating Attorney Jennifer Azevedo, the ACLU expressed opposition to proposed Department of Public Safety regulations that would significantly restrict information the Rhode Island State Police (RISP) would release about criminal investigations and subjects.  Under the Department’s proposal, only five specific pieces of information would be guaranteed to be open to the public: the arrestee’s name, address, age, location of arrest, and name of arresting officer. 

Ruling in an open meetings lawsuit brought by the Rhode Island ACLU and the Barrington Times, R.I. Superior Court Judge Brian Stern held yesterday that Barrington School Committee meeting agendas often violated the Open Meetings Act by “patently disregard[ing] the spirit and purpose” of the Act and “the public’s statutorily-protected right to be advised of the workings of its governmental bodies through appropriate notice.” Another portion of the ruling, which upheld the School Committee’s closure of a meeting in 2009 to discuss the merits of instituting a mandatory breathalyzer policy for all students attending school dances, also established significant limitations on what can constitute a valid basis for meeting with legal counsel in executive session.

The State has paid over $5,500 in attorneys’ fees and costs to the RI ACLU to conclude an Access to Public Records Act (APRA) lawsuit the ACLU filed against Governor Donald Carcieri in 2008 seeking access to documents addressing the “chain of command” when the Governor is out of state.

Seeking to halt a disturbing trend by public bodies to unlawfully meet in private, the RI ACLU has, for the second time in six months, filed an Open Meetings Act (OMA) lawsuit against a school committee for violating the law’s provisions governing the holding of executive sessions.

R.I. Superior Court Judge Brian Stern today denied the Barrington School Committee’s motion to dismiss an open meetings lawsuit filed against it by the RI ACLU and the Barrington Times.

In papers filed today in Superior Court, the Rhode Island ACLU has labeled as “downright Orwellian” arguments being made by the Barrington School Committee in seeking to dismiss an open meetings lawsuit that The Barrington Times and the ACLU filed against the public body in August. The suit argues that the School Committee unlawfully met in closed session last year to discuss the merits of instituting a mandatory breathalyzer policy for students attending school dances. The suit further charges that school committee agendas, by using “vague boilerplate terminology,” routinely fail to specify the nature of the business to be discussed at meetings. The school committee has justified its secret meeting by citing the open meeting law’s “litigation” exemption, pointing to a letter that the ACLU had written two months before the meeting that raised policy concerns about breathalyzer tests of students.

Calling it “a major victory for transparency in our judicial system,” the Rhode Island ACLU today applauded comments from R.I. Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Suttell, as reported in the Providence Journal, that the Court had no immediate plans to implement a controversial 25-year-old state law allowing retired judges to preside over secret civil cases for compensation. At a public hearing in January, the RI ACLU had raised numerous concerns about the proposal. 

The Rhode Island ACLU and The Barrington Times have today filed new claims in a pending lawsuit against the Barrington School Committee, alleging additional and repeated Open Meetings Act (OMA) violations.

In a case raising critical issues about the public’s right to know, The Barrington Times and the Rhode Island ACLU have today filed an Open Meetings Act (OMA) lawsuit against the Barrington School Committee for unlawfully meeting in closed session this past February to discuss the merits of instituting a mandatory breathalyzer policy for all students attending school dances. The school committee relied on the OMA’s “litigation” exemption to meet in private, but the lawsuit, filed by RI ACLU cooperating attorneys Howard Merten and Keith Fayan, notes that at the time of the executive session “there was no litigation pending or threatened” and “there was not even a specific policy in place that could have been challenged through litigation.”