The Douglas County School Board — four majority members in particular — violated Colorado Open Meetings Law in connection to the firing of former Superintendent Corey Wise, according to a district court ruling.
Robert “Bob” Marshall, now a state representative of House District 43, filed a lawsuit in February 2022 alleging the board’s conservative majority violated state statute by holding a series of private one-on-one meetings to discuss replacing Wise. Colorado Open Meetings Law, part of the Colorado Sunshine Law, generally requires state or local governmental bodies to discuss public business or to take formal action in meetings open to the public.
Board members Michael Peterson, Rebecca Myers, Kaylee Winegar and Christy Williams are recognized in the Friday Douglas County District Court ruling as “majority board members” of the seven member board.
A trial was held on Monday and District Court Judge Jeffrey K. Holmes found in a ruling filed Friday that the “Individual Defendants’ conduct was in violation of COML.”
Wise, who was fired by the board in a 4-3 decision, was paid more than $830,000 by the school district in April to settle discrimination claims over his dismissal.
The court found that the firing “was a rubber stamping of the discharge discussion and decision that constituted the COML violation by the Individual Defendants and the violation, therefore, went uncured.”
The individual defendants, the majority board, argued that their behavior did not violate COML and “it does not appear that they were purposefully acting in an unlawful manner,” according to the ruling. “They did not blatantly violate the statute by gathering as a group of three or four to discuss public business. They apparently received advice from an attorney regarding interpretation of the statue and then acted consistently with that interpretation in a manner they believed circumvented the statute’s prohibitions.”
The court declined to order a permanent inunction in the case against the majority board members, finding that the defendants have not “engaged in sequential one-on-one discussions or decision making that is prohibited by the statue” since a preliminary injunction was ordered on March 9, 2022.
The court did not find merit in the request to declare the termination of Wise as being null and void, in part, because of the April settlement he reached with the district.
“The court grants the declaratory judgment requested in connection with Plaintiff’s first claim for relief,” the ruling said. “The court denies the injunction requested in the second claim for relief and the judgment declaring Superintendent Wise’s termination null and void requested in the third claim for relief.”
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