Recent Court Decisions

The plaintiff sought disclosure of certain documents related to complaints of police misconduct within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in the form of Complaint Registers (CR) and Repeater Lists (RL). RLs were documents about officers who amassed the most misconduct complaints. CRs were related to CPD’s completed investigations into allegations of police misconduct. The issue on appeal was whether the CRs and RLs were “adjudicatory” and exempt under Section 7(1)(n) of FOIA.

On appeal the Court held that both CRs and RLs must be disclosed. They are not exempt under Section 7(1)(n) because neither were part of any adjudication. In its ruling, the Court held that it was possible that another FOIA exemption may apply to the CRs and RLs, e.g., the deliberative process exemption. However, whether the deliberative-process exemption applied would be resolved after an “in camera” (private) inspection by the trial court judge after the case was sent back to the trial court for more proceedings.

In camera inspections and FOIA exemptions: Note that the public body bears the burden of establishing that public records fall within a claimed FOIA exemption. To meet the burden, and to assist the court in making its determination, the public body must provide a detailed justification for its claimed exemption, addressing the requested documents specifically and in a manner allowing for the party that is requesting the records to rebut.

A newspaper submitted a FOIA request to the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (Department) for the number of claims made against 22 named physicians. The Department presented evidence that it did not keep such a record in the ordinary course of business and urged that it was not required to create it. The Department did not waive this argument by failing to assert it during proceedings before the Public Access Counselor. The Court, quoting from earlier decisions, found that a request to inspect or copy must reasonably identify a public record and not general data, information, or statistics. FOIA “does not compel the agency to provide answers to questions posed by the inquirer.” Here, the Department was not obligated under FOIA to answer the newspaper’s general inquiry question since this would have required the creation of a new record.

The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by failing to timely comply with a records request from the Uptown People’s Law Center (Uptown). IDOC turned over the requested records two weeks after Uptown filed a petition in court. FOIA requires a trial court to award attorney fees to any person who “prevails” in a proceeding to enforce FOIA. The question was whether a party can “prevail” under FOIA absent a court order. An earlier decision from the Second District Court of Appeals found that a party does not “prevail” under FOIA unless a court issues an order requiring compliance. Here, the First District found that a plaintiff may obtain attorney fees under FOIA regardless of the extent that he or she is successful in a court action. It held that court-ordered relief is not a prerequisite to an award of attorney fees under FOIA. The Court still denied Uptown an award of attorney fees. It cited an Illinois Supreme Court decision holding that an attorney representing him- or herself is not entitled to an award of attorney fees. Uptown was represented by in-house lawyers and, thus, was not required to spend additional funds specifically to pursue the FOIA request. The Court found that Uptown was not entitled to receive attorney fees that were never incurred.

IASB filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the district to no avail – the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reconsider its decision that a dismissed superintendent was denied procedural due process rights and that the school board members were not entitled to qualified immunity.

The school board dismissed the superintendent for cause before his contract expired. In the pre-termination hearing, it provided him an opportunity to address the board. The superintendent, believing the process was unfair, refused to participate in the hearing. The Seventh Circuit Court rejected the district’s argument that the superintendent waived his due process rights and held that the board should have given him full trial-type procedural due process. The availability of a post-termination lawsuit for breach of contract was insufficient, according to the Seventh Circuit, to protect his “present entitlement” to his contractual interests.

Most surprisingly, however, was the Seventh Circuit’s opinion that a reasonable board member would have known his or her conduct was unlawful because the superintendent’s procedural due process rights were clearly established. This finding precipitated the court’s denial of qualified immunity to the individual board members.

[Note: The following case has no precedential value in Illinois but is posted because it is a topic of interest to school officials.]

An assistant principal's liberty interest in his good name and reputation, as related to his employment, was not infringed when a tape-recorded sexually-explicit telephone conversation he had with his secretary was disseminated.

The assistant principal's employment was not terminated, and he was allowed to fulfill his one-year contract. He was later offered a position as a first-grade teacher, but then he secured a position as an administrator in a different district.