When A Meeting Is Public

In North Carolina, each official meeting of a public body is open to the public, and any person is entitled to attend, except as the closed session and other listed sections provide. A remote meeting held under the emergency rules has to meet the same requirement even if every member takes part remotely.

• §G.S. 143-318.10

• A public body is any elected or appointed authority, board, commission, committee, council or other body of the State or of a county, city, school unit or other political subdivision, with two or more members, exercising a legislative, policy making, quasi-judicial, administrative or advisory function.
• It also includes the governing board of a public hospital and of certain nonprofits that took over a hospital.
• It does not include a meeting solely among the professional staff of a public body, or a hospital's medical staff.

• §G.S. 143-318.10

An official meeting is a gathering at any time or place, or a simultaneous conference by telephone or other electronic means, of a majority of the members for the purpose of conducting hearings, deliberating, voting or otherwise transacting public business. A social meeting or other informal gathering of members is not an official meeting unless it is called or held to evade the spirit and purposes of the law.

• §G.S. 143-318.10

The purposes for which a closed session may be held, the notice rules, and the remedies when a meeting violates the law are in other sections of the Article and are not reproduced here. Whether a particular gathering was an official meeting is a question for a court and for a licensed North Carolina attorney.

• §G.S. 143-318.10