Open meetings laws

All 50 states and many localities as well as the federal government have enacted open meetings laws, or “Government in the Sunshine Acts,” as these laws are often called. Disclosures at such meetings, however, may threaten personal privacy. For this reason, many open meetings laws permit the closing of meetings to protect personal privacy. Enactment of these laws followed a public right-to-know movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Those campaigns also led to the passage of public records laws. Open meetings laws were adopted by several states prior to the passage in 1976 of the federal Government in the Sunshine Act.
This federal open meetings law illustrates the general aspects of these laws and demonstrates how they protect personal privacy. These laws rest on the proposition that the government’s business should be conducted in public. The federal act requires that the deliberations of councils, commissions, and other public agencies headed by multi-member bodies be open to the public. These laws secure one’s right to observe deliberations, not the right to participate in them. For example, in the federal Government in the Sunshine Act Congress contemplated that the public would observe meetings in the same room as agency members. These laws also assumed that representatives of the media would play an important role in reporting the actions of government officials.
The disclosures accompanying the observation of government deliberations not only inform the public and temper the decisions of boards and commissions, but also provide personal information about individuals discussed in these meetings. The disclosure and publication of personal information about individuals is a potential threat to their privacy; therefore, many, if not most, of these laws include provisions intended to protect personal privacy. A common provision allows meetings or portions of meetings to be closed to the public and the press.
One of the exemptions in the federal Government in the Sunshine Act exemplifies this protection. An agency covered by the law may close a meeting that is likely to disclose information of a personal nature if disclosure “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Not all state provisions contain a privacy exemption, however, and even among those that do, some define privacy differently than federal law. Thus, the scope of privacy protection may vary.
The exemption contained in the federal Government in the Sunshine Act is similar to one contained in the federal Freedom of Information Act. In the Sunshine Act, the exemption extends to “information of a personal nature,” which means information applicable to a specific person. If such information is likely to be disclosed at an open meeting, that meeting should be closed if the disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
The language requires that the interest in privacy be weighed against the public interest in disclosure of the information as part of the process of deliberation. Moreover, the language demonstrates that the balance is clearly in favor of the interest in privacy. Under this test, however, Congress suggested that it might be appropriate to close a meeting in certain circumstances to protect from observation a discussion of a person’s health or drinking habits and an assessment of a person’s professional ability in connection with review of a person’s finances to determine eligibility for financial assistance.
A person’s status as a public official may affect the character of privacy protection. For example, the privacy interest of a high government official may be less than that of a lower-ranking official or of a private person. The lesser privacy interest of a high government official whose conduct is discussed at a public meeting reflects the greater public interest in the conduct or qualifications of such an official.
Another, narrower exemption permits the closing of a meeting when the deliberative body is to discuss whether to accuse a person of a crime or to formally to censure that person. Public discussions of these matters can invade the persons’ privacy and harm his or her reputation even if the agency decides not to make the accusation or to impose the formal censure.