A major provision of the Texas Open Meetings Act has been struck down by Texas’ highest criminal court.
The provision in question, according to the Texas Tribune, makes it a crime for members of a governmental body to “knowingly [conspire] to circumvent this chapter by meeting in numbers less than a quorum for the purpose of secret deliberations.” The law was struck down as part of the Court’s ruling on the case of Judge Craig Doyal.
In the majority opinion, Judge Sharon Keller called the statute lacking in specificity.
“We do not doubt the legislature’s power to prevent government officials from using clever tactics to circumvent the purpose and effect of the Texas Open Meetings Act,” Keller wrote. “But the statute before us wholly lacks any specificity, and any narrowing construction we could impose would be just a guess, an imposition of our own judicial views. This we decline to do.”
The ruling was not unanimous, however. Judge Kevin Yeary wrote a dissenting opinion, saying, “To provide a true disincentive, the stigma of a criminal penalty is necessary.”
