The Supreme Court of Virginia has upheld a Suffolk judge’s ruling that denied immunity to former Suffolk Public School Board member Dr. Judith Brooks-Buck and current School Board member Tyron Riddick in a defamation lawsuit filed by Deborah Wahlstrom. In an Oct. 16 opinion written by Justice Teresa M. Chafin, the Court affirmed the Suffolk Circuit Court’s decision overruling the pair’s demurrers and returned the case for further proceedings, finding that claims of legislative, sovereign and statutory (anti-SLAPP) immunity could not be resolved on the pleadings alone.
The Prince William County School Board voted during a special meeting on Saturday to publicly censure Vice Chair Tracy Blake in response to a heated exchange he had with a fellow board member that was apparently over an effort to start a local high school chapter of Turning Point USA. The vote to censure Blake occurred when the board returned to open session, according to school board records, but the school board did not announce the vote in advance. During the Oct. 15 meeting, the board voted 6-2 to issue a “written notice” regarding a school board member, but neither the school division nor Blake nor board member Erica Tredinnick would comment on what the notice was about.
The Office of the Attorney General is appealing a decision that Connecticut’s lead economic agency and its commissioner violated core provisions of the state’s Freedom of Information law by attempting to charge no less than $41,943.25 to provide public records. A Freedom of Information Commission ruling on Aug. 13 against the Department of Economic and Community Development cited “concern” about the department’s attempt to charge labor and other costs from the citizen by extracting “a retainer” of sorts without justification. A paralegal with the department had testified that the fees were formulated on the advice of the Office of Attorney General William Tong. The department’s violations of the law in this case included failing to produce records promptly and to produce the vast majority of records requested. “By conditioning receipt of the requested [digital] records on the complainant’s pre-payment of exorbitant fees,” the Department of Economic and Community Development broke the law, the commission determined.
A private judge has granted a request from the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition to intervene in a divorce case in which a suppression order makes the entire court file — and the order itself — unavailable to the public. Former Denver District Court Judge William Meyer of the Judicial Arbiter Group set an Oct. 27 hearing to consider CFOIC’s motion to open the case of Kaufmann v. Kaufmann “with only truly sensitive, private (non-public) information redacted therefrom.” In a filing submitted to Meyer on Friday, First Amendment attorney and CFOIC president Steve Zansberg quotes a 1994 Colorado Court of Appeals opinion to argue that “in all civil cases, including those involving domestic relations, the public is entitled to inspect and/or copy all records on file with the Court unless and until a judicial finding as been made that ‘the harm to the privacy of a person in interest outweighs the public interest’ in accessing judicial records.”
The Treasury Department instructed employees not to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing after images of construction equipment dismantling the facade of the building went viral online. Treasury’s headquarters is located next door to the East Wing, giving employees there a front-row seat to the construction of President Trump’s $250 million ballroom. The new project is set to replace parts of the East Wing.
