The Institute for Reforming Government, a conservative nonprofit, is suing the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction alleging that it violated open meetings law with a standards setting meeting two years ago and is requesting that state testing standards be voided. 

The lawsuit centers on a four-day testing standards-setting meeting held in June 2024 at Chula Vista, a water park resort in the Wisconsin Dells. The meeting brought together 88 educators and DPI staff to discuss and help set the new standards for the Forward Exam, the standardized test that Wisconsin third-graders through eighth-graders take each year.

Republican lawmakers and conservatives have scrutinized the agency over the cost of the meeting, nondisclosure agreements that participants signed and for being held behind closed doors. DPI has said that the cost of the work done related to the meeting was in line with typical costs, that NDAs were necessary because the test materials that were being reviewed would be used in live tests and that the meeting was not subject to open meetings laws.

IRG had first filed a complaint in Adams County in April. The Adams County district attorney did not file charges within 20 days, so the organization has turned to a lawsuit. It is being represented by the Wisconsin Transparency Project. 

IRG is asking that a judge declare that DPI violated the law and void any actions DPI took, including the adoption of new state testing standards, as a result of the recommendations made by those at the meeting.

Jake Curtis, general counsel at IRG, said in a statement that “the DA’s silence left us no choice but to pursue legal action — Wisconsin families deserve to know how and why decisions about their children’s education are being made behind closed doors.” 

“DPI cannot lower academic standards in secret and simply expect parents and students to accept the outcome. Taxpayers funded this process, but DPI shut them out,” Curtis said. 

Tom Kamenick, the president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, said in a statement that a committee like the one organized by DPI has to follow state open meetings law.

“Compliance is not difficult. Put up a public notice and then tell people they are welcome to attend and see the work being done,” Kamenick said. “It’s a few simple steps.” 

Chris Bucher, spokesperson for DPI, said in an email that he could not comment in detail due to ongoing litigation, adding in a statement that “the DPI has openly and transparently participated in legislative hearings related to this matter, which the Republican co-chair of a legislative committee called ‘routine.’ However, more than two years after the fact, a special interest group with a well-documented political agenda continues to recycle unfounded accusations, diverting public resources and agency time away from the work that matters most: supporting Wisconsin students, educators and schools.”

DPI leaders previously told lawmakers that the meeting was not subject to open meetings law because it was conducted by the vendor it contracts with for the Forward Exam, Data Recognition Corporation (DRC). He said it is a private company not a governmental body subject to Wisconsin’s open meeting laws.

“DRC is not a government body. It is a private contractor in the same way that Microsoft is not a government body, Apple’s not a government body. People who do business with the Department of Public Instruction — those are contractors who perform a service for it,” Rich Judge, an assistant state superintendent, said when complaints first surfaced.

A Dane County Circuit Court judge ordered the Wisconsin Department of Justice to release its list of about 16,000 law enforcement officers certified in the state. 

The lawsuit was brought by media outlets the Badger Project and Invisible Institute. Police officers in Wisconsin are required to be certified by the state’s Law Enforcement Standards Board. The DOJ has previously released partial versions of the list, arguing that the full database could compromise the identity of officers working undercover. 

Both outlets have frequently written about “wandering cops” who leave departments due to misconduct or abuse only to be hired by another agency. The DOJ list includes a record of cops being fired or resigning in lieu of termination. 

Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled on Tuesday that the DOJ’s argument against releasing the list went against the state’s open records law. 

“When responding to records requests, there is a strong presumption of openness and liberal access to public records,” she wrote.  “[T]he DOJ has not met its burden to show that this is an ‘exceptional case’ warranting nondisclosure.”  The judge concluded that DOJ’s denial “was not the product of a genuine, case-by-case balancing analysis, but rather a habitual denial based on [its] past inability to garner compliance from local agencies.”

Lanford noted that law enforcement officers hold a public position and therefore “necessarily relinquish certain privacy and reputational rights by virtue of the amount of trust society places in them and must be subject to public scrutiny.”

Tom Kamenick, the lead attorney in the lawsuit and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Institute, said the decision was a win for transparency in Wisconsin government and the requirement that officials must prove real risk of harm when denying an open records request. 

“Courts have ruled time and time again that speculative fears of harm do not justify withholding government records from the public,” Kamenick said in a statement. “Government officials must do more than merely claim that, hypothetically, something bad might happen if the records are released.  Rather, they must show that harm is likely to occur and is sufficiently serious to overcome the presumption of access to government records. DOJ could not do that here.”