Members of the Iowa board that governs public universities did not violate state law when they met privately with an applicant who they later hired as president of the University of Iowa, a Polk County district court judge ruled Monday.

“It may have looked problematic in the way (Bruce) Rastetter organized the recruitment of Bruce Harreld, but ultimately, the board lacked the numbers needed for a meeting throughout the recruitment process,” Judge William Kelly wrote in his ruling.

In addition, there was “no evidence” that current and former Iowa Board of Regents' members cited in the lawsuit deliberated or took any action during the back-to-back meetings, Kelly wrote.

Former UI employee Gerhild Krapf had alleged in a 2016 lawsuit that the regents violated state law when they met with Harreld, a former IBM executive, “through a series of closed-door meetings” on July 30, 2015.

The trial had been scheduled to start Nov. 6, although attorneys from both sides had asked that it be delayed.

Harreld applied for the job the day after he met with regents and two months later was named president.

Krapf had asked the court to void Harreld's appointment and fine the regents for violating Iowa's open-meetings law, which requires public boards to give advanced notice about meetings and open them to the public.

Krapf will appeal Kelly’s decision to the Iowa Supreme Court, her attorney, Gary Dickey, said in an email.

“Both sides have agreed all along that this is a case that needs to be decided by the Iowa Supreme Court,” Dickey wrote. “The court’s ruling today paves the way for that to happen much sooner than if we had gone through the time and expense of a trial.”

Josh Lehman, regents spokesman, said the board was “pleased” with Kelly’s ruling.

“We do not believe a violation of the open meetings law occurred and are glad that the judge has agreed,” he said.

Iowa law states that a majority of members of a public board cannot gather, formally or informally, to carry out policy-making duties without first informing the public.

Nine people are on the regents’ board.

Before he applied for the president’s job, Harreld asked to meet with some of the regents to learn more about the university and the board’s expectations of a university president, court records show.

Meetings were set up using private email accounts rather than members’ officials board accounts, according to court records. In addition, the five regents involved with the meetings described how they arranged the gatherings to avoid having a majority of the board together at one time and how they did not discuss what happened at the meetings with anyone afterwards

Harreld met with four regents, two at a time, in back-to-back meetings at then-board president Bruce Rastetter’s private business in Ames, according to court records. The regents involved in the meetings were Milt Dakovich, Mary Andringa, Larry McKibben and Katie Mulholland. Rastetter transported Harreld to Ames from Des Moines.

Krapf had argued in the lawsuit that the time Rastetter and Harreld spent together in a vehicle traveling from the airport in Des Moines to Ames should also be considered a meeting.

Kelly, in his ruling, disagreed although he wrote that “Rastetter could be accused of exercising poor judgment in the appearance of how he set up” the meetings and relayed information about Harreld to board members.

Still, wrote Kelly, Rastetter did not speak to other board members about the time he spent with Harreld in the car, “so no deliberation occurred.”

Kelly also said that Krapf and Dickey make “a fair point…that it would be factually impossible to have a tighter chronological nexus than actual back-to-back meetings.” But, because Rastetter’s time with Harreld was not considered a meeting, no violation of state law occurred, Kelly wrote.

Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, said the Iowa Legislature or state supreme court need to clarify “what constitutes a meeting.”

“There’s been plenty of other cases that a public board has appeared to have a serial meeting or walking quorum to avoid conducting the public’s business in public,” Evans said.