When A Meeting Is Public
Gov. Code 54953 — open and public, no secret ballot, and an agenda 72 hours ahead
In California, all meetings of the legislative body of a local agency are open and public, and all persons are permitted to attend any of them, except as the chapter otherwise provides.
- No legislative body may take action by secret ballot, whether preliminary or final.
- The body publicly reports any action taken and the vote or abstention of each member present for it.
- All votes taken during a teleconferenced meeting are by rollcall, and each teleconference location is identified in the notice and agenda and accessible to the public.
- A member with a disability may take part by remote participation as a reasonable accommodation, and that counts as attending in person.
At least 72 hours before a regular meeting, the body or its designee posts an agenda with a brief general description of each item of business to be transacted or discussed, including items for closed session. The agenda gives the time and location, and is posted in a place freely accessible to the public and on the agency's internet website, if it has one.
What is not on the agenda is not acted on, with narrow exceptions. No action or discussion is undertaken on an item not appearing on the posted agenda. Members and staff may briefly respond to statements or questions from the public, ask a question for clarification, make a brief announcement, or direct staff to place a matter on a future agenda. The body may act on an unlisted item only after publicly identifying it, and only for an emergency found by majority vote, a need for immediate action that arose after the agenda was posted found by a two-thirds vote of those present, or an item continued from a properly posted meeting not more than five calendar days earlier.
The closed session rules, the notice rules for special and emergency meetings, the public's right to address the body, and the remedies for a violation are in other sections of the chapter and are not reproduced here. Whether a particular gathering was a meeting of a legislative body is a question for a court and for a licensed California attorney.
Sources for this section (2)
- Gov. Code 54953 — Meetings to be open and public; attendance
- Gov. Code 54954.2 — Agenda; posting; action on other matters
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed California attorney.