The Rhode Island mother who got herself sued by teachers unions for trying to shine a light on public school curricula is now waging her own legal fight for public access to “secret meetings” about “equity” for students who are black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC).
Nicole Solas filed an Open Meetings Act (OMA) lawsuit Wednesday against the South Kingstown School Committee and its BIPOC Advisory Committee, which refused to let her attend its meetings where “district policies regarding curriculum, hiring, discipline, and accountability” where discussed, according to her lawyers at the Goldwater Institute.
It’s the latest challenge to a government body allegedly outsourcing its work to evade legal obligations.
Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general updated their lawsuit against federal authorities’ alleged collusion with Big Tech this week, adding censored doctors as plaintiffs and additional federal officials as defendants based on newly disclosed CDC and Department of Homeland Security documents.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha investigated Solas’ complaint but eventually decided the advisory committee is not a “public body” because it “only makes suggestions and does not have authority over implementing its suggestions.”
He distinguished it from the governor’s Emergency Hiring Council that had “veto power” over state decisions, which the Rhode Island Supreme Court deemed a public body in a successful legal challenge by Solas’ late father Gregory.
In a May 10 letter to Solas and the counsel for the school district, Neronha argued it’s not enough that the school district created the committee, that some of its members also serve on the district’s policy subcommittee — whose recommendations can be implemented— or that the district paid Nonviolent Schools RI to run 25 regularly scheduled meetings.
Solas is seeking a superior court determination that the advisory committee’s “meetings, minutes, actions, and other activities” are public, but also asking to void actions taken by the committee or the district in response to its recommendations because it met secretly.