## Facts

- The UNC School of Law faculty met in general faculty meetings and acted through committees and subcommittees on curriculum, academic standards, admissions, and student discipline.
- The Student Bar Association Board of Governors and individual law students sought declaratory and injunctive relief to open faculty and committee meetings to nonfaculty observers under North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law.
- University officials, sued in their official capacities, contended the faculty and its committees were not “governing and governmental bodies” covered by the statute.
- Defendants also raised that open meetings could conflict with FERPA protections when student-specific matters were discussed.
- The trial court ordered faculty and committee meetings opened to the public and required the dean to provide public notice of meetings; the Court of Appeals affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether the law school faculty and its committees/subcommittees were “governing and governmental bodies” (or covered component parts) under North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law.
2. Whether the Open Meetings Law authorized a court to require public notice of faculty and committee meetings.
3. Whether FERPA affected application of the Open Meetings Law to meetings involving student educational matters.

## Decision

- The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed.
- The Court held the law school faculty and its committees/subcommittees were not within the Open Meetings Law’s coverage, so their meetings need not be open to the public.
- The Court held the trial court lacked statutory authority to order public notice of such meetings because the statute imposed no notice requirement.
- The Court vacated or modified the injunctive relief consistent with these holdings.

## Legal Principles

- Statutory open-meetings requirements apply only to entities that fall within the legislature’s defined category of “governing and governmental bodies” (and their covered component parts) that administer legislative or executive functions as bodies politic in the public interest.
- Internal academic bodies within a public university, even when influential in institutional operations, are not covered absent statutory language conferring or recognizing governmental decision-making authority of the type described in the statute.
- Courts may not add procedural obligations (such as advance public notice) when the statute requires only that meetings of covered bodies be open and contains no notice provision.
- Potential interaction with federal student-privacy law may be avoided when the state statute, properly construed, does not reach the challenged meetings.

## Conclusion

The court ruled that North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law did not apply to UNC law faculty meetings or their committees because they were not statutory “governing and governmental bodies,” and it rejected a judicially imposed public-notice requirement not found in the statute.


Student Bar Ass'n Bd. of Governors v. Byrd, 293 N.C. 594, 239 S.E.2d 415 (N.C. 1977)