Wisconsin Supreme Court delivers open meetings ruling

MADISON – The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday ruled the state's open meetings law applied to an Appleton school committee that repeatedly met behind closed doors to review material for a freshman reading class.

The decision by Justice Michael Gableman concluded the high court could not consider claims by school officials that such a finding would make it harder for schools around Wisconsin to function. 

"Our task is to apply the open meetings law as it is written. ... We are not at liberty to exempt (the school committee) from the definition of 'governmental body' simply because government officials would find it convenient," Gableman wrote.

All seven justices agreed with finding that the open meetings law applied to the committee, but the court's two liberals wrote separately because they disagreed with the reasoning of the majority opinion.

The case now returns to Outagamie Circuit Court to determine whether the school district must pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees for the parent who brought the lawsuit. Courts typically award those fees when the government is found to have violated the meetings law.

In 2011, John Krueger and the parent group Valley School Watch asked the Appleton Area School District to offer an alternative freshman communications course because they didn't want children reading references to suicide and sex in the book "The Body of Christopher Creed."

School officials declined to form a new course because students already could opt out of reading specific books. Instead, they formed a 17-member committee to review material for the class.

The committee did not meet in public and Krueger sued in 2013 with the assistance of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. A circuit judge ruled in the school district’s favor in 2014, as did the District 3 Court of Appeals in 2016.

Those lower courts found the committee was not subject to the meetings law because lower-level school officials had formed the committee on their own and did not receive a specific directive to do so.

But the state Supreme Court concluded the committee was formed on the basis of rules spelled out in the district's handbook, making it subject to the meetings law. 

Joining Gableman in the decision were Chief Justice Patience Roggensack and Justices Rebecca Bradley, Daniel Kelly and Annette Ziegler. 

Concurring were the court's liberals, Justices Shirley Abrahamson and Ann Walsh Bradley. (The Bradleys are not related.)

Their opinion provided a narrower interpretation of when the meetings law applies to government committees, with Abrahamson writing for the pair that this case was a "close call."

"The open meetings law should not be interpreted to apply to every meeting between administrators and employees and others to discuss how to implement specific policies or programs or how to do their day-to-day jobs," she wrote.

Lee Allinger, superintendent of the district, said in a statement he was disappointed in the ruling but would ensure school officials comply with it.

"It has never been the intent of the Board of Education to circumvent (the) open meetings law by delegating their authority to educator work committees," his statement said.

Attorney Rick Esenberg, who represented Krueger, said Thursday's decision was an important ruling that would ensure the public could attend meetings where school officials review class material book by book. 

"That's where the real work of government gets done," he said. 

Krueger praised the ruling. He no longer has children attending Appleton schools.

The decision "provides the clarity needed for the proper application of the law, assuring us all that Wisconsin will remain one of the most transparent states in the country," he said in a statement released by his lawyers.

Jen Zettel of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin contributed to this report.