a. Cameras and Tape Recorders
A board or commission may adopt reasonable rules and policies which ensure the orderly conduct of a public meeting and require orderly behavior on the part of those persons attending a public meeting. A board, however, may not ban the use of non-disruptive recording devices. Pinellas County School Board v. Suncam, Inc., 829 So. 2d 989 (Fla. 2d DCA 2002) (school board’s ban on unobtrusive videotaping invalid). Accord AGO 91-28. And see AGO 77-122 (silent non-disruptive tape recording of district meeting permissible).The Legislature in Ch. 934, F.S., appears to implicitly recognize the public’s right to silently record public meetings. AGO 91-28. Chapter 934, F.S., the Security of Communications Act, regulates the interception of oral communications. Section 934.02(2), F.S., however, defines “[o]ral communication” to specifically exclude “any public oral communication uttered at a public meeting....” See also Inf. Op. to Gerstein, July 16, 1976, stating that public officials may not complain that they are secretly being recorded during public meetings in violation of s. 934.03, F.S.
b. Exclusion of Certain Members of the Public
The term “open to the public” as used in the Sunshine Law means open to all persons who choose to attend. AGO 99-53. Cf. Ribaya v. Board of Trustees of City Pension Fund for Firefighters and Police Officers in City of Tampa, 162 So. 3d 348, 356 (Fla. 2d DCA 2015) (although there appears to be no case law “squarely resolving” whether a wrongful exclusion of one person would void all actions taken at the meeting, “there is legal support for that proposition”).Thus the court in Port Everglades Authority v. International Longshoremen’s Association, Local 1922-1, 652 So. 2d 1169, 1170 (Fla. 4th DCA 1995), ruled that a procurement committee violated the Sunshine Law by requesting that bidders voluntarily excuse themselves from each other’s presentations. See now s. 286.0113(2), F.S., providing an exemption from the Sunshine Law for any portion of a meeting at which a vendor makes an oral presentation or answers questions as part of a competitive solicitation, and requiring a complete recording of the exempt portion of the meeting.
Staff of a public agency clearly are members of the public as well as employees of the agency; they cannot, therefore, be excluded from public meetings. AGO 79-01. Section 286.011, F.S., however, does not preclude the reasonable application of ordinary personnel policies, for example, the requirement that annual leave be used to attend meetings, provided that such policies do not frustrate or subvert the purpose of the Sunshine Law. Id.
Although not directly addressing the open meetings laws, courts of other states have ruled that in the absence of a compelling governmental interest, agencies may not single out and exclude a particular news organization or reporter from press conferences. See, e.g., Times-Picayune Publishing Corporation v. Lee, 15 Media L. Rep. 1713 (E.D. La. 1988); Borreca v. Fasi, 369 F. Supp. 906 (D. Hawaii 1974); Quad-City Community News Service, Inc. v. Jebens, 334 F. Supp. 8 (S.D. Iowa 1971); and Southwestern Newspapers Corporation v. Curtis, 584 S.W.2d 362 (Tex. Ct. App. 1979).
