County’s Six-Month Ban on Shaun Porter Deemed Violation of Maryland Open Meetings Act

According to the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board, the Washington County Board of Commissioners overstepped its authority when it barred local activist Shaun Porter from attending public sessions for six months. In a July 17 opinion, the state board determined that while the county may remove a disruptive speaker during a meeting, it cannot impose a prospective ban on future attendance for merely causing a disruption during the meeting.

Porter, known for his outspoken criticism of county officials, drew the trespass order after using profanity and briefly exposing his buttocks during the public comment period of an April 8 commissioners meeting. In response, County Attorney Zachary Kieffer issued a letter prohibiting Porter from attending any sessions for half a year, citing disruption of the board’s normal proceedings. Porter’s absence prompted him to challenge the ban before the Open Meetings Compliance Board.

The compliance board’s opinion highlighted that Maryland law authorizes only the immediate removal of any individual “disrupting an open session” and does not permit barring a citizen from future meetings based on past conduct. Reviewers cited the plain language of the Open Meetings Act and comparable interpretations under Delaware law to conclude that a permanent exclusion violates the statute’s present-tense removal provision.

Beyond the Open Meetings Act, the Compliance Board noted that public bodies facing genuine safety concerns still have recourse to court-ordered or statutory measures. For instance, if officials can demonstrate “an imminent threat of irreparable harm” based on prior disruptive behavior or threats, they may petition a court for a restraining order to prevent an individual’s future attendance at meetings. Likewise, other statutes—such as provisions authorizing no-trespassing orders under the Education Article—can serve to bar someone from public property, including meeting venues, without relying on the Act’s removal language.

With this decision, Washington County will likely need to restore Porter’s in-person access to commissioner meetings, though officials may still remove him if he again disrupts proceedings, or can prohibit his access for safety reasons if they can demonstrate a imminent threat. The ruling underscores that livestream alternatives cannot substitute for the public’s fundamental right to attend local government meetings in person unless other statutory authority exists.

While the Washington County Board has indeed adopted new decorum rules—prohibiting obscene or unrelated remarks, limiting signs and recordings during public comment—the Compliance Board’s opinion does not itself evaluate the legality of those specific regulations. Rather, it underscores that the Open Meetings Act governs only the right to attend and the presiding officer’s power to remove a disruptive individual “from an open session” at the time of the disturbance (§ 3-303(c)), and it expressly disclaims authority over how a public body structures or enforces its comment policies. In other words, although the Board may set and apply rules of decorum, any enforcement under the Act must take the form of immediate removal for disruption and cannot be converted into a forward-looking prohibition on future attendance.

Article by multiple contributors, based upon information from the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board

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