FOI Advisory Council Opinion, AO-01-26

AO-01-26

February 23, 2026

Joshua Stanfield
Yorktown, Virginia 23692
Request received via email

The staff of the Freedom of Information Advisory Council is authorized to issue advisory opinions. The ensuing staff advisory opinion is based solely upon the information presented in your email of December 12, 2024.

Dear Mr. Stanfield:

You have requested that the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council (FOIA Council) address the following questions:

(1) Does the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (§ 2.2-3700 et seq. of the Code of Virginia) (FOIA) require any degree of specificity concerning the “location” of a public meeting?

(2) Does simply listing the locality in which a public meeting will take place satisfy the location requirement in subsection D of § 2.2-3707 of the Code of Virginia given the policy statement in subsection B of § 2.2-3700 of the Code of Virginia?

Factual Background

As background information, on December 5, 2024, you submitted a request under FOIA to representatives of the Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Services Council for “copies of any public notice(s) released concerning yesterday’s Council Meeting” and asked if the notice on their website (https://www.cas.state.va.us/event/council-meeting-45/) was their public notice.

In response to your request under FOIA, you were informed that public notices of meetings may be found on the Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Services Council website (www.cas.state.va.us).

The public notice of the December 4, 2024, meeting of the Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Services Council was posted as follows:

Council Meeting
Date: December 4, 2024
Time: 2:00 pm
Location: Charlottesville, VA 

When minutes of the December 4, 2024 meeting were posted to the Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Services Council website, the minutes showed that the meeting was conducted at the Boar’s Head Resort. A similar practice was utilized when posting the minutes of subsequent meetings, which included the location of the meetings with the minutes but not in the notice. Upon further review of the Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Services Council website,¹ this office observed that notices for future meetings were posted as follows:

Analysis

This section addresses both of the questions you posed. As you noted in your initial correspondence, this office has not previously issued guidance explaining the location requirement to be included in a notice for a meeting. While this office has opined on other facets of the notice requirement, specifically time and date,² the requirements for what constitutes proper location have yet to be addressed explicitly by the FOIA Council. We begin by examining whether FOIA requires any degree of specificity concerning the “location” of a public meeting and subsequently turn to considering whether merely listing the locality in which a public meeting will take place satisfies the location requirement in subsection D of § 2.2-3707 of the Code of Virginia. We analyze this second issue keeping in mind the policy statement in subsection B of § 2.2-3700 of the Code of Virginia that “[t]he affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy since at all times the public is to be the beneficiary of any action taken at any level of government” and that all public “meetings shall be presumed open, unless an exemption is properly invoked.”

The short answer to your first question is no, there is no provision of FOIA specifying requirements for the level of detail that a public body must provide when listing the location of a meeting within a notice. The only explicit requirement regarding notice and location is found in subsection D of § 2.2-3707 of the Code of Virginia, which states, “Every public body shall give notice of the date, time, [and] location . . . of its meetings.” [Emphasis added.] 

Next, we turn to your second question. As noted above, the location requirement for the notice of a meeting in subsection D of § 2.2-3707 of the Code of Virginia is not specifically addressed in FOIA or in prior advisory opinions, Virginia court cases, or Attorney General Opinions. However, FOIA does have specificity requirements when making requests for public records that are informative by comparison, although not controlling in regard to meetings. FOIA’s policy statement in subsection B of § 2.2-3700 of the Code of Virginia requires “public bodies and their officers and employees to make reasonable efforts to reach an agreement with a requester concerning the production of the records requested.” Additionally, subsection B of § 2.2-3704 of the Code of Virginia requires that “[a] request for public records shall identify the requested records with reasonable specificity.” This provision has been given a practical standard by this office to mean that “a request needs to be specific enough to enable a public body to begin to process the request and, if clarification is required, to ask relevant questions to understand the scope of the request.”³ The requirement established in these provisions, along with common sense, is instructive in determining that when posting the location of a meeting, a public body should always provide sufficient information to allow citizens to attend the meeting. Therefore, that level of specificity would require a public body to provide detail beyond simply listing the general locality (city, town, or county) where a meeting will be held, because only knowing the locality is generally not enough to allow attendance. However, because there are multiple ways to identify a meeting location, there is no specific black-letter rule on what is the proper way to do so. For example, in a small locality where the town hall has only one meeting room, saying that the meeting will be held at “Town Hall, Locality” would be enough. In a larger locality, such notice might be insufficient as there could be multiple meeting rooms within the same building, so the specific room may need to be identified in order for someone to attend the meeting (such as “City Hall, Meeting Room 123, Locality”). 

Furthermore, this interpretation aligns with FOIA policy in subsection B of § 2.2-3700 of the Code of Virginia, which states that FOIA’s purpose is to ensure “free entry to meetings of public bodies wherein the business of the people is being conducted.” FOIA policy also states that:

The affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy since at all times the public is to be the beneficiary of any action taken at any level of government. Unless a public body or its officers or employees specifically elect to exercise an exemption provided by this chapter or any other statute, every meeting shall be open to the public and all public records shall be available for inspection and copying upon request. All public records and meetings shall be presumed open, unless an exemption is properly invoked.⁴

FOIA policy further directs that the provisions of FOIA shall “be liberally construed to promote an increased awareness by all persons of governmental activities and afford every opportunity to citizens to witness the operations of government.”⁵ Based on the foregoing, it follows generally that the more information a public body supplies when providing notice related to a meeting’s location, the better. Because FOIA policy dictates that meetings shall not be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy,⁶ reasonable specificity in denoting the location of a meeting achieves this important statutory purpose. 

Moreover, recent Virginia case law provides a useful point of comparison. In Suffolk City School Board v. Wahlstrom, the Supreme Court of Virginia examined a variety of issues relating to FOIA. One such issue was the importance of allowing the public to physically attend a public meeting. In this case, Wahlstrom argued, among other things, that “[FOIA’s] provisions stating that the public be granted ‘free entry to’ and the right to ‘be present’ at meetings of public bodies require that members of the public be allowed to attend public meetings in person in the room in which the meeting is being conducted.”⁷ Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Virginia agreed with Wahlstrom, concluding that attendance by the public at in-person meetings necessitates allowing the public the ability to enter the actual room where the meeting is being held.⁸

While this case examines only what it means to allow for the physical presence of citizens at a public meeting and does not address the provision of adequate notice of the location, the spirit of the decision helps inform the specificity requirement related to notice and location. By logical extension, entry into and physical presence in a meeting room require that citizens must first be able to locate the meeting. Therefore, a public body, as a matter of both statutory compliance and best practice, must provide sufficient specificity regarding the meeting’s location in its notice.

Despite the paucity of Virginia secondary source material, other states have similar meeting notice requirements that may provide insight. For example, the Attorney General of Maryland issued an opinion addressing the state’s notice requirement, which states, in relevant part,”[W]e read the notice requirement to include a good-faith effort by the public body to invite the public to its meetings and, as part of that, to reliably provide the public with accurate meeting information.”⁹

Accurate information and an open invitation from the public body to the public are deemed by the Attorney General of Maryland to be crucial in satisfying the notice requirement. Likewise, in Virginia, accurate information is necessary to satisfy FOIA’s notice requirements. Accurate meeting information requires, inherently, reasonable location specificity so that the public may be invited and may attend, if so inclined.

Conclusion

As you highlighted in your initial correspondence with this office, the public body in question listed only the locality where the meeting was taking place. The degree of specificity in this instance is clearly insufficient to provide an open invitation, because listing only the city does not provide enough information for a citizen to attend the meeting. In light of FOIA’s policy statement found in subsection B of § 2.2-3700 of the Code of Virginia, if citizens of the Commonwealth cannot reasonably locate a meeting based on the meeting’s public notice, the notice becomes almost meaningless – the public will know that a meeting is being held, but will not have sufficient information to attend it. By listing the location of a meeting with reasonable specificity (such as by using a building name, street address, room number, or other information as appropriate), a public body can provide sufficient notice to the public. Lastly, we acknowledge that while numerous meeting locations may exist, reasonable specificity depends on the circumstances, so certain entities may post a general meeting location, if, for example, the location was the only place where a meeting could occur. If there are multiple possible meeting locations, then more specificity may be necessary. In this instance, identifying the meeting location as “Charlottesville” was insufficient, but as an example, identifying it as “the Boar’s Head Resort, Charlottesville” would have enabled the public to go to the main location (the Boar’s Head Resort) and, once there, get more information regarding the specific room by asking staff or checking a directory. The practical standard for meetings being held in person therefore is that the notice must identify the location where the meeting is held with sufficient information for the public to attend the meeting in person.

Sincerely,

Matteo Murrelle
Senior Attorney

Alan Gernhardt, Esq.
Executive Director

¹Commonwealth Attorneys Services Council, Council Meetings, https://www.cas.state.va.us/meetings/ (last visited, 
²Freedom of Information Advisory Opinions AO-18-01, AO-02-04, AO-06-07 and AO-08-07 (noting that our discussion pertains only to in-person meetings where physical presence/location is required, not virtual meetings). 
³See Freedom of Information Advisory Opinion AO-01-00. 
⁴Va. Code Ann. § 2.2-3700(B). 
⁵Id. 
⁶Id.
⁷Suffolk City Sch. Bd. v. Wahlstrom, 886 S.E.2d 248, 254 (Va. 2023). 
⁸See id. 
⁹Md. Att’y Gen. 12 OMCB Opinions 108, 109 (2019). https://www.marylandattorneygeneral.gov/Opinions OMCB Documents/Vol12/12OMCB108.pdf