A Douglas County resident is now asking a judge to nullify the firing of Superintendent Corey Wise and to bar the local school board from conducting the type of conversations that precipitated Wise’s dismissal earlier this month.

In a new version of a lawsuit he filed earlier this month, parent and lawyer Robert Marshall asked a judge to declare Wise’s firing “null and void” because – Marshall alleged – the Douglas County school board’s four officers had broken the state open meeting law by having private discussions about Wise’s future without notifying the public or discussing it at public meetings. Marshall is also requesting that the court declare that those conversations violated the law and that it bar the board from engaging in those types of deliberations going forward.

Marshall filed his initial complaint on Feb. 4, hours before the Douglas County school board was set to vote on Wise’s future. Marshall initially sought to have a judge block that vote: He alleged that the board’s newly elected officers – Mike Peterson, Christy Williams, Kaylee Winegar and Becky Myers – had broken the state open meeting law by having one-on-one conversations about Wise’s future and deciding in those conversations to fire him.

All four of those members are named defendants in the lawsuit. Peterson and Williams have flatly denied those allegations; they have said they consulted with an attorney and followed the law. A message sent to a Douglas County School District spokeswoman Wednesday morning was not immediately returned.

The new complaint, an update to Marshall’s initial lawsuit, was filed late last week by Steven Zansberg, a leading First Amendment and media lawyer in Colorado. He’s also the president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition’s board.

The school board’s new members have said they discussed Wise’s future in one-on-one meetings among themselves at the end of January; they did not inform the other three members until they decided to meet with Wise and reevaluate the future of the district. Under Colorado’s open meeting law, they would’ve had to announce and publicly meet if three or more of them discussed district business. Because they kept their conversations to just two board members at a time, Williams and Peterson have said, they did not violate the law.

Despite that careful reading, the lawsuit alleges those conversations still broke the law. 

“Colorado’s Supreme Court has declared that ‘the (Colorado Open Meetings Law) prohibits bad-faith circumvention of its requirements,'” the suit states. “This includes the intentional avoidance of the quorum requirement by conducting ‘serial meetings’ of less than three-at-a-time, a practice that has been called a ‘walking quorum’ or ‘constructive quorum’ which numerous courts have been found to violate other states’ open meetings laws.” 

After those individual conversations about Wise’s future, Peterson and Williams – the board’s president and vice president, respectively – met with Wise on Jan. 28. They have said publicly they walked the superintendent through the options in Wise’s contract, including his retirement, his dismissal for cause and the board unilaterally terminating his contract. Peterson said that conversation was the beginning of a process, and Williams said she viewed it as a compassionate way to discuss Wise’s future privately.

But the board’s longer-serving members – David Ray, Susan Meek and Elizabeth Hanson – publicly accused their four peers of having already decided to fire Wise and of telling him on Jan. 28 that he had four days to decide if he wanted to retire or be fired. They alleged the board’s four new members conducted these conversations in private and in violation of state law.

On Feb. 4, the board voted 4-3 to immediately terminate Wise’s contract.

The suit alleges that purportedly illegal meetings conducted by members of a public body – like the school board – cannot be rectified by “rubber stamping” the decision in public later. In other words, the suit accuses the board of illegally meeting and deciding to fire Wise and then attempting to formalize that decision in a public meeting that otherwise complies with state law.

The board’s four officers contend that they never broke any laws. Peterson has said his decision to fire Wise was solidified after subsequent protests by district personnel and by the board’s three other members. 

Because the decision to fire Wise was allegedly made illegally, Marshall and Zansberg contend that Wise’s termination should be declared void. They also asked a Douglas County district court judge to bar the board’s four newest members “from further violations of the COML by discussion of public business among three or more members without notice or an open meeting.”

The first hearing on the lawsuit will be held Feb. 25.