The Supreme Court of Virginia agreed in early July to hear oral arguments in the Fredericksburg e-mail case.

In December 2002, Fredericksburg Circuit Court Judge John W. Scott ruled that one of three e-mail exchanges among three Fredericksburg City Council members was an improper electronic meeting.

The lawsuit, brought by political foes of Mayor Bill Beck, Vice Mayor Scott Howson and Councilman Matt Kelly, argued that the three discussed public business in the e-mail exchanges. FOIA prohibits local public bodies from meeting via electronic means, and also defines a meeting in this instance as three or more council members gathering to discuss public business.

The councilmen argued that the e-mail exchanges could not be considered "meetings" because the discussion and replies between them all occurred over several hours and days.

Scott said it wasn't important whether the replies were made simultaneous to one another; what mattered is what was said in the e-mail. One e-mail exchange was a give-and-take discussion of a public issue, and was thus a meeting, the judge ruled. The other two exchanges were merely the sharing of information and were not meetings.

The Virginia Municipal League criticized the ruling, insisting that the e-mails were little different from the exchange of letters.

The Freedom of Information Advisory Council said in a January 2001 advisory opinion that any use of listservs or back-and-forth responses to e-mails addressed to three or more public officials on a matter of public business constitutes an illegal electronic meeting.

Both sides considered appealing at one point; eventually, only the council members did. Oral arguments will likely occur this fall.