Title: State ex rel. Bratenahl v. Bratenahl

State: ohio

Issuer: Ohio Supreme Court

Document:

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State 
ex rel. More Bratenahl v. Bratenahl, Slip Opinion No. 2019-Ohio-3233.] 
 
 
 
 
 
 
NOTICE 
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an 
advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports.  Readers are requested to 
promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 
South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other 
formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before 
the opinion is published. 
 
 
SLIP OPINION NO. 2019-OHIO-3233 
THE STATE EX REL. MORE BRATENAHL; MEADE, APPELLANT, v. THE VILLAGE 
OF BRATENAHL ET AL., APPELLEES. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as State ex rel. More Bratenahl v. Bratenahl, Slip Opinion No. 
2019-Ohio-3233.] 
Civil law—Application of R.C. 121.22, Ohio’s Open Meetings Act—The Open 
Meetings Act does not permit a governmental body to take official action by 
secret ballot—Maintaining secret-ballot slips as public records does not 
cure an R.C. 121.22 violation—Court of appeals’ judgment reversed and 
cause remanded. 
(No. 2018-0440—Submitted March 26, 2019—Decided August 14, 2019.) 
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Cuyahoga County, No. 105281,  
2018-Ohio-497. 
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SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
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DEWINE, J. 
{¶ 1} Ohio’s Open Meetings Act commands, “All meetings of any public 
body are declared to be public meetings open to the public at all times.”  R.C. 
121.22(C).  The question before us is whether a village council complies with this 
directive when it elects a council officer by way of a secret ballot.  We say no. 
I.  A secret ballot to elect a president pro tempore of council 
{¶ 2} In January 2015, the Bratenahl Village Council gathered for its first 
meeting of the year.  Among the council’s business that day was the election of a 
president pro tempore—someone to serve as the acting mayor when the mayor is 
absent or unable to perform his or her duties.  See R.C. 731.10.  After two members 
were nominated for the position, the following exchange was had:  
 
MAYOR LICASTRO: Do you want to do a show of hands?  Do 
you want to do a secret ballot? 
COUNCILMEMBER BECKENBACH: Let’s do secret ballot.  
We’ve always done that. 
MAYOR LICASTRO: Secret Ballot.  Mr. Matty? 
COUNCILMEMBER BACCI: Is that legal? 
SOLICITOR MATTY: Yes, it is legal. 
* * * 
COUNCILMEMBER BACCI: I thought I saw something in the 
Sunshine Law of the [Ohio Revised Code] that you can’t have a 
secret ballot. 
 
{¶ 3} No one replied to Councilmember Bacci’s comment, and the council 
proceeded to vote by secret ballot.  The village solicitor privately tallied the votes.  
Without revealing the results, he announced that the council would have to vote 
again because someone had voted for a person who had not been nominated.  The 
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second vote was a tie, so the council voted by secret ballot a third time.  Again, the 
village solicitor counted the votes and, without announcing the votes, declared 
Councilmember Jim Puffenberger the new president pro tempore. 
{¶ 4} A year later, the community-news publication MORE Bratenahl and 
Patricia Meade, the operator of MORE Bratenahl, filed suit against the village of 
Bratenahl, five of the village’s councilmembers, and its mayor (collectively, 
“Bratenahl”).  MORE Bratenahl and Meade sought a declaratory judgment that 
Bratenahl had violated Ohio’s Open Meetings Act, R.C. 121.22, by conducting 
public business by secret ballot, an injunction to prohibit future secret-ballot voting, 
reasonable attorney fees, and a civil forfeiture of $500. 
{¶ 5} During discovery, Meade sought copies of the ballots.  Bratenahl 
produced the ballot slips with sticky notes attached to them, purporting to identify 
the councilmember who cast each vote.  Both sides filed motions for summary 
judgment.  The trial court denied Meade’s motion for summary judgment and 
awarded summary judgment to Bratenahl. 
{¶ 6} On appeal, the Eighth District found that Meade was unable to 
establish that Bratenahl had violated the Open Meetings Act.  It noted that, because 
the votes were cast in open session and were maintained as a public record, the 
votes were not “secret.”  2018-Ohio-497, ¶ 20.  Thus, there was “no evidence that 
Bratenahl attempted to conceal information from the public.”  Id. 
{¶ 7} We accepted Meade’s appeal on the question whether members of a 
public body violate the Open Meetings Act when they vote on matters of public 
business through the use of secret ballots.  See 152 Ohio St.3d 1489, 2018-Ohio-
2155, 99 N.E.3d 426. 
II.  The Open Meetings Act does not permit a governmental body to take 
official action by secret ballot 
{¶ 8} The Open Meetings Act begins with a pronouncement: “This section 
shall be liberally construed to require public officials to take official action and to 
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conduct all deliberations upon official business only in open meetings unless the 
subject matter is specifically excepted by law.”  R.C. 121.22(A).  It directs that 
“[a]ll meetings of any public body are declared to be public meetings open to the 
public at all times.”  R.C. 121.22(C).  And it further provides, “A resolution, rule, 
or formal action of any kind is invalid unless adopted in an open meeting of the 
public body.”  R.C. 121.22(H).  (The act includes several exceptions to its 
requirements, none of which are applicable here.) 
{¶ 9} Bratenahl does not dispute that its council is a public body, that the 
election of a president pro tempore was an “official action” on “public business,” 
or that the council’s January gathering was a meeting.  (A meeting is defined as 
“any prearranged discussion of the public business of the public body by a majority 
of its members.”  R.C. 121.22(B)(2).)   The only question is whether the council 
acted in a meeting that was “open to the public” when it selected its president pro 
tempore by secret ballot. 
{¶ 10} Taking a point from the introductory language of the act, Meade says 
that we must construe the act in favor of openness.  To allow a secret ballot, she 
says, is inconsistent with the act’s legislative purpose of allowing the public to 
ascertain the workings of their government. 
{¶ 11} Bratenahl pushes back on such a reading.  It says that the act does 
not prescribe a voting procedure, pointing to a municipal corporation’s statutory 
authority “to determine its own rules.”  R.C. 731.45.  In essence, Bratenahl contends 
that the act is satisfied as long as the doors to the meeting space are unlocked and 
the public is permitted to sit in the same room as the council. 
{¶ 12} We begin our analysis with the text of the act, focusing on the 
ordinary meaning of its terms and its structure.  Because the act does not define 
“open” or “open meeting,” we afford the terms their plain, everyday meanings, 
looking to how such words are ordinarily used.  Great Lakes Bar Control, Inc. v. 
Testa, 156 Ohio St.3d 199, 2018-Ohio-5207, 124 N.E.3d 803, ¶ 8-10.  This work 
January Term, 2019 
 
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includes reading words in their context and construing them “according to the rules 
of grammar and common usage.”  R.C. 1.42; see also Great Lakes at ¶ 9. 
{¶ 13} “Open” is a word with a variety of usages.  It is defined as 
“completely free from concealment ˸ exposed to general or particular perception or 
knowledge,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1579 (1966)—a 
definition that supports Meade’s interpretation.  But it can also mean more narrowly 
“free to be entered, visited, or used,” Webster’s New International Dictionary 1705 
(1953), and “in a state which permits access, entrance, or exit,” Webster’s New 
World Dictionary 948 (3d College Ed.1988)—definitions more in line with 
Bratenahl’s reading of the act. 
{¶ 14} When we consider the full text of the act, its structure, and the 
legislative purpose as derived from the text of the act, we think it clear that the 
broader reading must carry the day.  Significantly, the act does not just say that all 
meetings shall be open to the public.  It also provides that “[a] resolution, rule, or 
formal action of any kind is invalid unless adopted in an open meeting of the public 
body.”  R.C. 121.22(H).  Thus, the act ties the openness requirement to official 
action taken at the meeting.  Not only must the meeting be open, but any official 
action (for example, the election of a president pro tempore) must take place in an 
open meeting.  We read this to mean that that portion of the meeting in which the 
formal action is taken—here, the vote—must be open. 
{¶ 15} Further, when the text of a statute makes its purpose clear, and we 
must choose between two permissible readings of the statutory text, an 
interpretation that advances the purpose of the statute is to be preferred over one 
that would thwart that purpose.  See Griffin v. Oceanic Contrs., Inc., 458 U.S. 564, 
571, 102 S.Ct. 3245, 73 L.Ed.2d 973 (1982); see also Scalia & Garner, Reading 
Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 56-57 (2012).  The text of the act makes 
clear its purpose: to require that public business be conducted in a manner that is 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
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accessible to the public.  Meade’s reading advances that purpose; Bratenahl’s 
reading does not. 
{¶ 16} Bratenahl’s reliance on the fact that the Open Meetings Act does not 
prescribe particular voting procedures does little to advance its cause.  Just as the 
act does not prescribe a particular voting procedure, it does not prescribe how 
members are to communicate in such a meeting.  But certainly, a meeting is not 
open if the members communicate in whispers, concealing their deliberations from 
the public.  See Manogg v. Stickle, 5th Dist. Licking No. 97 CA 104, 1998 Ohio 
App. LEXIS 1961, *2, 4 (Apr. 8, 1998).  Nor do we think it would be open if the 
members spoke only in Latin, or placed a screen between themselves and the 
audience, or took any of numerous other actions that would limit the public’s ability 
to access their deliberations.  The act may not prescribe any particular voting 
procedure—and a council may adopt its own rules—but none of this alters the 
fundamental requirement that the public have meaningful access to what takes place 
at the meeting. 
{¶ 17} The reading that Bratenahl proposes—that a meeting is open as long 
as the doors of the meeting room are open to the public—is inconsistent with our 
precedent.  In State ex rel. Cincinnati Post v. Cincinnati, we held that the act was 
violated when the city manager set up a series of back-to-back meetings (each 
attended by three of the city’s councilmembers) to discuss public business prior to 
the regular session of the nine-member council.  76 Ohio St.3d 540, 542-543, 668 
N.E.2d 903 (1996).  In doing so, we looked to the legislative dictate that the statute 
be liberally construed and concluded that “Cincinnati’s game of legislative musical 
chairs,” id. at 544, was inconsistent with the statutory requirement that 
governmental bodies “conduct all deliberations upon official business only in open 
meetings.”  R.C. 121.22(A). 
{¶ 18} Similarly, we have held that the act prohibited a majority of a school 
board from engaging in a private, prearranged discussion of public business by e-
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mail that was later ratified by the board at a public meeting.  White v. King, 147 
Ohio St.3d 74, 2016-Ohio-2770, 60 N.E.3d 1234, ¶ 15, 24-25. 
{¶ 19} Implicit in the Cincinnati Post and White decisions is a rejection of 
the view that Bratenahl advances.  The act is not satisfied simply because the doors 
of a council meeting are open to the public.  Rather, an open meeting requires that 
the public have meaningful access to the deliberations that take place among 
members of the public body, and that includes being able to determine how 
participants vote. 
{¶ 20} Thus, we hold that the Open Meetings Act precludes a public body 
from taking official action by way of a secret ballot.  Bratenahl violated the act 
when it elected its president pro tempore by secret ballot. 
III.  Maintaining secret-ballot slips as public records does not cure a R.C. 
121.22 violation 
{¶ 21} Bratenahl also argues that since the secret-ballot slips were 
maintained as public records, they were not actually secret.  The court of appeals 
reached this same conclusion, finding that since the votes were cast in open session 
and later made public record, they were not “secret.”  2018-Ohio-497, at ¶ 20.  But 
the availability of concealed information through a public-records request does not 
retroactively make a meeting with secret votes “open to the public.”  Besides the 
practical problems attending Bratenahl’s position—illustrated by the sticky notes 
haphazardly appended to the ballot slips, supposedly identifying the voters more 
than a year after they had cast their votes—it lacks any support in the text of R.C. 
121.22.  The statute’s plain language requires that public meetings remain open 
throughout the proceedings themselves—the prospect of future access does not 
make a meeting “open to the public at all times.”  (Emphasis added.)  R.C. 
121.22(C).  The statutory burden to maintain a meeting’s openness is on the public 
officials, not the public.  R.C. 121.22(A) and (C).  Likewise, the consequence for 
failing to adopt a formal action in an open meeting—invalidation of that action—
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
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falls on the public body.  R.C. 121.22(H).  Thus, the availability of secret-ballot 
slips as a public record does not retroactively make a meeting compliant with the 
act. 
IV.  The matter is not moot 
{¶ 22} Bratenahl argues that since the president pro tempore’s term has 
expired, the issue is moot.  But again, the statute’s plain terms refute this argument.  
R.C. 121.22(I)(1) provides:  
 
Any person may bring an action to enforce this section.  An 
action under division (I)(1) of this section shall be brought within 
two years after the date of the alleged violation or threatened 
violation.  Upon proof of a violation or threatened violation of this 
section in an action brought by any person, the court of common 
pleas shall issue an injunction to compel the members of the public 
body to comply with its provisions. 
 
{¶ 23} Thus, the act specifically allows a party to bring an action within two 
years of a violation—as Meade did.  And when a violation or threatened violation 
is proven, it mandates the issuance of an injunction.  Because the act, by its terms, 
anticipates exactly the type of action Meade pursued, we have little difficulty 
concluding that the matter is not moot. 
V.  Conclusion 
{¶ 24} We hold that the use of secret ballots in a public meeting violates the 
Open Meetings Act.  Accordingly, we remand this matter to the court of common 
pleas to issue an injunction under R.C. 121.22(I)(1), order the village council to pay 
a civil forfeiture under R.C. 121.22(I)(2)(a), and award any other relief consistent 
with R.C. 121.22. 
Judgment reversed  
January Term, 2019 
 
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and cause remanded. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and KENNEDY, FRENCH, FISCHER, DONNELLY, and 
STEWART, JJ., concur. 
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Finney Law Firm, L.L.C., Brian C. Shrive, Christopher P. Finney, and 
Justin C. Walker, for appellant. 
Matty, Henrikson & Greve, L.L.C., David J. Matty, Shana A. Samson, and 
Mark B. Marong, for appellees. 
Frost Brown Todd, L.L.C., Ryan W. Goellner, and Monica L. Dias, urging 
reversal for amici curiae Ohio Coalition for Open Government, Reporters 
Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Ohio Association of Broadcasters. 
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