Student Bar Association Board of Governors v. Byrd
North Carolina Supreme Court
239 S.E.2d 415 (1977)
- Written by Laura Julien, JD
Facts
North Carolina had an open-meetings law that established that official meetings of the governing and government bodies of the state, including their subsidiary components, had to be open to the public. The Student Bar Association Board of Governors at the University of North Carolina (the student bar association) (plaintiff) filed suit against Robert Byrd (defendant), the dean of the University of North Carolina law school, alleging that nonfaculty members had the right to attend meetings of the law school faculty pursuant to the state’s open-meetings law. The University of North Carolina was a public university, controlled by a board of governors. Byrd argued that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protected certain student information that could become a subject of the meetings and, therefore, controlled over the state’s open-meetings law. The court of appeals found in favor of the student bar association, holding that the faculty meetings must be open to the public. Byrd then filed an appeal.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Lake, J.)
Dissent (Exum, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 805,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
