Recent Court Decisions

A request for certified payroll records was made of a public body. The public body did not respond in the required 5 day timeframe and it asserted that the records request was unduly burdensome. The PAC has found that a public body must respond within the required 5 days and, if the public body asserts the request as unduly burdensome, it must provide the requestor an opportunity to narrow the FOIA request.

If a public body wants to assert that a records request is unduly burdensome, it should contact its board attorney for assistance to respond within the required timeframes and narrow the request to something manageable.

This opinion is binding only to the parties involved and may be appealed pursuant to State law.

Service learning hours required by the school district did not constitute a form of involuntary servitude. Section 27-22 of School Code allows school districts the freedom to add additional graduation requirements based on certain needs of their students and communities in their districts. Section 27-22.3 of School Code does not prohibit districts from requiring students to complete community service hours as an additional graduation requirement. A requirement of 24 hours of community service over four years is not unreasonable, onerous, or unduly burdensome.

Shanell M. Bowden, IASB Law Clerk

A transgender boy student claimed that the school board’s bathroom policy that prohibited him from using the bathroom that corresponds with his gender identity amounted to sex discrimination under Title IX. The court found that Department of Education regulation 34 C.F.R. § 106.33 allows schools to provide separate bathroom facilities based upon sex, so long as the bathrooms are comparable. Therefore, the school board policy did not violate Title IX by limiting the student to the bathrooms assigned to his biological sex. The court found that the school board was protecting a constitutional right to bodily privacy while the student wanted to overturn a “tradition of segregating bathrooms based on biological differences between the sexes.”

The court denied the student’s request for an order allowing him to resume using the boys’ restroom while the court ruled on his Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection claim.

While this case does not apply in Illinois, transgender or gender nonconforming student rights is a developing and important area. School officials should continue to monitor cases on this topic.

Shanell M. Bowden, IASB Law Clerk

The court at the Board’s request dismissed this case. The superintendent brought claims for declaratory judgment, which alleged that the Board improperly dismissed her. She also brought a claim for breach of contract. The Board had good cause for the dismissal of the superintendent because she acted outside the scope of her authority by transferring “disruptive” students to alternative schools without board hearings for extended periods of time. These students were not given any other form of a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Even if the practice of transferring students to alternative schools without a hearing was routinely done for years in the school district, this did not negate the superintendent’s responsibility to know the law and follow the School Code. If the Board had ulterior motives in terminating the superintendent, this did not negate the reasonable basis that existed for the superintendent’s dismissal.

The superintendent’s due process rights were not violated because there was no evidence to suggest that she did not receive an impartial hearing.

Shanell M. Bowden, IASB Law Clerk

The amount of compensation paid by the public body is subject to disclosure unless it is otherwise exempted. The amount of compensation by itself is not exempt from disclosure under section 7(1)(b) of FOIA because it is not a “unique identifier” that could be considered private information. Additionally, the compensation information directly relates to the public body’s use of public funds and is also subject to disclosure pursuant to Section 2.5 of FOIA.

Residential addresses may be withheld under section 7(1)(b) but post office box numbers must be disclosed because they do not uniquely identify an individual or constitute a home address.

This opinion is binding only to the parties involved and may be appealed pursuant to State law.

Shanell M. Bowden, IASB Law Clerk