Case Name: Robert Q. MARSTON, President, University of Florida, and Fletcher Baldwin, Chairman, Dean Search and Screen Committee, College of Law, University of Florida, Appellants, v. Terri WOOD, as Editor of the Verdict, Thomas R. Julin, and Campus Communications, Inc., Appellees
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1982-12-22
Citations: 425 So. 2d 582
Docket Number: Nos. AF-475, AJ-393
Parties: Robert Q. MARSTON, President, University of Florida, and Fletcher Baldwin, Chairman, Dean Search and Screen Committee, College of Law, University of Florida, Appellants, v. Terri WOOD, as Editor of the Verdict, Thomas R. Julin, and Campus Communications, Inc., Appellees.
Judges: THOMPSON, J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 425
Pages: 582–589

Head Matter:
Robert Q. MARSTON, President, University of Florida, and Fletcher Baldwin, Chairman, Dean Search and Screen Committee, College of Law, University of Florida, Appellants, v. Terri WOOD, as Editor of the Verdict, Thomas R. Julin, and Campus Communications, Inc., Appellees.
Nos. AF-475, AJ-393.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.
Dec. 22, 1982.
Rehearing Denied Jan. 31, 1983.
Chesterfield Smith, Julian Clarkson, Michael Fogarty and Gregg Thomas of Holland & Knight, Tampa, for appellants.
Joseph W. Little and Winston P. Nagan, Professors of Law, University of Florida College of Law, Gainesville, amici curiae, for appellants.
Thomas R. Julin of Steel, Hector & Davis, Miami, Sandra Bieber of Sherman & Bie-ber, and Larry G. Turner of Larry G. Turner & Associates, Gainesville, for appellees.
Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., State of Florida, Tallahassee, and Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., et al., and Florence Beth Snyder, Gen. Counsel for Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., West Palm Beach, amici curiae, for appel-lees.

Opinion:
OWEN, WILLIAM C., Jr., (retired) Associate Judge.
The issue here is whether the Government in the Sunshine Law Section 286.011, Florida Statutes (1980), applies to the Dean Search and Screen Committee of the University of Florida College of Law. We hold that it does not, and reverse the very articulate and cogent order of the trial court to the contrary, together with a separate order awarding attorney's fees, the appeals having been consolidated.
A university's statutory authority to appoint, remove or re-assign academic deans is carried out by the president of the university. Section 240.202, Florida Statutes (1981). The constitution of the University of Florida, Article IV, Section 2(A)(3) requires that the president, in making his appointment of college deans, shall "give consideration to the opinion of the faculty of the college concerned by consultation with a special committee of at least three faculty members elected by the faculty of the college." Search and screen committees are used at the University of Florida to select every college dean, and President Robert Q. Marston never has selected a dean who was not an applicant recommended by a search committee. Thus, when in January 1980 Joseph R. Julin, Dean of the College of Law of the University of Florida, announced that he would resign as Dean effective March 1980, the faculty of the College of Law was notified to elect a committee to carry out the search and screen activities directed toward the selection and appointment of a new dean. The faculty of the College of Law elected seven of its members to serve as the voting members of this committee with Professor Fletcher N. Baldwin as the chairman. The faculty also appointed two students of the College of Law to serve as non-voting members of the committee and President Mar-ston, at the request of the trustees of the Law Center Association, appointed Chesterfield Smith, Esq., a distinguished member of the Bar, to serve on the committee as a voting member.
The precise role and functioning of the decanal search and screen committee has an important bearing on our decision in this case. As its name would imply, the committee did, indeed, search and screen decanal applicants, fulfilling its instructions to "submit a small list of names to the president for his consideration . representative of the very best talent in legal education in the United States of America." Immediately after it was formed in January 1980, the committee commenced holding regular meetings, usually once a week, kept minutes of its meetings, and established formal rules of precedure together with the criteria which it was to use to screen applicants. The committee was instructed by a vice-president of the University to close to the press and the public those portions of its meetings in which there was discussion pertaining to the qualifications of individual prospective candidates as well as discussions of evaluation of the candidates, such discussions to be carried out in executive session. The committee mailed at least one hundred letters soliciting decanal applicants and by March 1980 approximately forty applications had been received. However, before the committee actually considered any of these in executive session, this suit had been filed and a temporary injunction entered requiring the committee to conduct its meetings in compliance with the Sunshine Law.
The applications which the committee received were divided into primary and non-primary classifications, those in the latter category receiving no further consideration. After debating and evaluating the qualifications of each primary applicant, the committee, on behalf of the faculty, invited six candidates to visit the campus. The committee made no recommendation to the faculty with respect to the candidates, but presented merely the names and credentials to the faculty. During June, July and August 1980, the faculty and others interviewed the six applicants who visited the campus. The faculty declined to recommend any of the six candidates to the president and requested that the search and screen committee resume its search. The committee conducted a second nationwide search following a procedure similar to that followed in the first search. Subsequently, the faculty, not the committee, voted to require sixty percent faculty approval before again inviting an applicant to visit the campus, and further voted to reduce its two-thirds vote of approval to a sixty percent vote before recommending an applicant to the president. In January 1981, the committee recommended to the faculty (not the president) that five applicants be invited for interviews on the campus. At this point the committee ceased its operations. Two of the candidates recommended for invitations withdrew their applications before visiting the campus. The faculty, by its own action and without committee initiative, invited an additional applicant (who had been rejected by the committee) to visit the campus. All candidates were interviewed by the faculty and others including vice-presidents and deans of several colleges. After the on-campus interviews, the faculty recommended to the president all four candidates as being excellent. Before making the selection of a new dean, the president received evaluations of the candidates from the faculty, and from at least three vice-presidents and five deans. The president also consulted with representatives of the legal profession and national educational leaders.
The Sunshine Act, Section 286.011(1), Florida Statutes (1980), in pertinent part provides:
All meetings of any board or commission of any state agency or authority . at which official acts are to be taken are declared to be public meetings open to the public at all times, and no resolution, rule or formal action shall be considered binding except as taken or made at such meeting.
Appellants' initial argument is that neither the University of Florida nor its president, is an agency for Sunshine Act purposes. While a compelling argument is made to the effect that if the Legislature had intended to include universities within the scope of the Sunshine Act, it could have included the terms "university," "educational unit," "educational institution," "state university system" or "institution of higher education" and made its intention explicit as was done by the Legislature of the State of Washington, see Cathcart v. Andersen, 85 Wash.2d 102, 530 P.2d 313 (1975), we think it unnecessary to reach that question. Assuming the University of Florida and/or its president is an agency for Sunshine Act purposes, we are persuaded as to the soundness of appellants' second point — neither the search and screen committee nor the College of Law faculty is a "board" or "commission" for Sunshine Act purposes.
We base our decision in this respect upon both the "staff exception" approved by the Supreme Court in Occidental Chemical Co. v. Mayo, 351 So.2d 336 (Fla.1977) and Bennett v. Warden, 333 So.2d 97 (Fla.2d DCA 1976), and the remoteness of the committee's part in the decision-making process as recognized in Bennett v. Warden, supra, either of which standing alone would, under the facts of this case, be sufficient to sustain our position.
Granted, the committee did play a part in the decision-making process. While its role was partly clerical or administrative in soliciting applicants, and partly fact finding in nature in receiving the applications and compiling the data therein, it cannot be denied that its role also included participation in the selective process. However, its participation in that respect was merely a winnowing process by which it removed from the full faculty the burden of having to evaluate those applicants who clearly were either not qualified or less than fully qualified. The faculty members of the committee, by their academic experience and knowledge, possessed a degree of expertise which was uniquely suited to that winnowing process. Such is a proper function of staff, whose individual and collective expertise is commonly relied upon by public boards and commissions when the decision-making process involves considerations of complex or technical matters as to which the decision-maker has no special training or experience, but which are peculiarly within the expertise of the staff. Indeed, the rules and regulations of the University of Florida mandate that faculty members participate on university and college committees. The decanal search and screen committee, in utilizing the collective expertise of the several faculty members of the committee in evaluating the data contained in the applications for position of dean, seems to have performed a function quite comparable to the function performed by the staff of the Public Service Commission in sifting and evaluating data going into rate-making decisions, or the function performed by the staff of the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services in screening and evaluating bids and submitting appropriate recommendations to that agency.
Totally apart from our analogizing the function of the faculty committee to that of staff, we conclude that the committee's part in the decision-making process was much too remote from the ultimate decision maker to be considered as formulating policy or crystalizing any part of the decision-making process. While the committee did, indeed, have an indirect input into the decision-making process in the sense of eliminating from further consideration the bulk of the applicants, it must be recognized that in the final analysis the committee's function was solely advisory in nature, and not to the ultimate decision-maker but to the faculty as a committee of the whole. Clearly illustrating the remoteness of the committee's input into the decision-making process were the following facts: after the initial search and screen procedure, the committee, on behalf of the faculty, invited six candidates to visit the campus, none of whom after being interviewed by the faculty and others, received faculty recommendation; subsequently, the committee again recommended to the faculty (not the president) the names of certain applicants to be invited for interviews on the campus, following which the committee ceased its operations; it was the faculty, without committee intervention, that interviewed those candidates, invited an additional applicant whose name had been rejected by the committee, and who in due course recommended a list of candidates to the president; thereafter, the president conducted his own separate evaluation of the candidates recommended by the faculty before making his final selection. Thus, it is apparent that the committee's input into the decision-making process not only did not go directly to the final decision-maker, the president, but also was additionally screened and evaluated by the entire faculty whose actions regarding the committee's recommendations manifested their non-binding character. The role played by the faculty committee would seem to have less input into the final decision-making process than that of the employee's council which Bennett v. Warden, supra, held to be too remote to be subject to Sunshine Act coverage.
Appellants have presented two other arguments as to why neither the College of Law faculty nor the search and screen committee of the faculty is a "board" or "commission" for Sunshine Act purposes. First, appellants argue that by definition a board or commission is a body authorized to exercise limited quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial powers, or both, independently of the head of the department, powers which neither the faculty nor the faculty committee possessed. Were this case the first to construe the Sunshine Act, such argument might fall on attentive ears, but Palm Beach v. Gradison, 296 So.2d 473 (Fla.1974), as well as numerous other cases, teach that the statutory words "board or commission" have no such narrow or restrictive meaning. Secondly, appellants argue that application of the Sunshine Act to the faculty of the College of Law or its committee violates constitutional principles of academic freedom. We are not persuaded by that argument. See In re Dinnan, 661 F.2d 426 (5th Cir.1981).
Other states having acts similar to the Florida Sunshine Law have refused to apply open meeting legislation to law school and college faculty and student/faculty committees. The Georgia Supreme Court in McLarty v. Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, 231 Ga. 22, 200 S.E.2d 117 (1973), the North Carolina Supreme Court in Student Bar Association Board of Governors v. Byrd, 293 N.C. 594, 239 S.E.2d 415 (1977), and the Tennessee Appellate court in Fain v. Faculty of the College of the University of Tennessee, 552 S.W.2d 752 (Tenn.App.1977), each determined that its state open meeting act did not apply to committees similar to the search and screen committee involved in this case. Those eases are persuasive authority for the decision we reach here.
In the case of Krause v. Reno, 366 So.2d 1244 (Fla. 3d DCA 1979), relied upon by the trial court, the Third District Court of Appeal construed the Sunshine Act to apply to a predominatly lay advisory board appointed to advise the city manager of the City of Miami regarding the appointment of a new chief of police. Both on the facts and in principle the instant case and the Krause case have much in common. In Krause, the city manager of the City of Miami, who alone possessed the power of selecting and appointing the city police chief, appointed a five member citizens advisory committee to screen and evaluate applicants for the position, and to make recommendations as to the four or five found best qualified, which recommendations, while not binding upon the city manager, were to be given full consideration. Here, the president of the University of Florida, having the sole authority to select and appoint a dean of the College of Law, called upon the faculty of the College of Law to appoint a search and screen committee to review and evaluate applicants and recommend those whom the committee found to be best qualified, which recommendations, while not binding on the president, were to be given full consideration. We have sought to distinguish this case from the Krause case by pointing out that (1) here the faculty was the equivalent of staff, while in the Krause case the committee consisted, with one exception, of lay persons, and (2) here the faculty committee's input was necessarily more restricted and remote since the committee reported to the faculty as a whole, which latter body made the ultimate recommendations to the president, while in the Krause case the lay advisory committee met with and reported directly to the appointing authority, the city manager. Absent the validity of those distinguishing factors, our decision here would conflict with the Third District Court's in decision in Krause v. Reno, supra.
The judgment of the trial court is reversed and this cause remanded for entry of a final judgment for the defendants, appellants herein. Our reversal of that judgment requires that we likewise reverse the separate order awarding attorney's fees to the plaintiffs in the trial court, which we do without reaching or deciding the merits of the issues raised on the separate appeal from that order.
REVERSED and REMANDED.
THOMPSON, J., concurs.
WIGGINTON, J., dissents.
. As the Supreme Court noted in Occidental Chemical Co. v. Mayo, 351 So.2d 336 (Fla.1977), at 342, n. 10, if the members of a collegial administrative body were obliged to avoid their staff during the evaluation and consideration stages of their deliberations, "the value of staff expertise would be lost and the intelligent use of employees would be crippled."
. While we do not overlook the presence on the committee of three non-faculty members (including two students as non-voting members) that factor does not materially detract from our concept of the committee as staff.
. See, Occidental Chemical Co. v. Mayo, 351 So.2d 336 (Fla.1977).
. See, opinion letter to Alvin J. Taylor, 81 Fla. Atty. Gen. 51 (July 8, 1981).