Recent Court Decisions

The school board properly followed procedural requirements of Sections 34-8.3(a), (b), and (c) of School Code (Section 34 applies to Chicago Public Schools). Those sections apply to the removal of principals for schools on probation. The school board's decision to remove the Plaintiff as a principal was not against manifest weight of evidence.

[NOTE: This appeal arises from the same underlying facts where Roxana Comm. Unit School Dist. No. 1 (RCUSD) asked for and was granted an injunction against the Illinois Pollution Control Board. The injunction required the PCB to (1) stop violating the OMA and (2) hold all of its future meetings in public pending the outcome of the trial on the allegations by RCUSD that PCB violated FOIA and OMA. See Roxana CUSD #1 v. WRB Refining, LP and EPA, Pollution Control Board & Dept. of Revenue, Ill. App. 4th 120331 (2012) (available in RC&AD archives) and Roxana Community Unit School Dist. No. 1 v. Environmental Protection Agency, --- N.E.2d ---, 2013 IL App (4th) 120825 (November 14, 2013) (available in the RC&AD District Organization and Operation section).]

In this appeal, the RCUSD asked the Illinois Supreme Court to review an appellate court decision. The appellate court found that it did not have jurisdiction (authority) to hear an appeal that was filed by the RCUSD. Using a provision in the Ill. Environmental Protection Act, RCUSD appealed directly to the appellate court (as opposed to the circuit court). RCUSD appealed the Pollution Control Board’s order denying its petitions to intervene in proceedings before the Pollution Control Board. The proceedings involved whether or not to certify a facility as a “pollution control facility.” The Illinois Supreme Court agreed with the appellate court. It found that RCUSD did not qualify or assert itself under any of the categories listed in the Ill. Environmental Protection Act, which are authorized to appeal a Pollution Control Board decision directly to an appellate court.

This case may be of interest to school officials because the Illinois Eavesdropping statute applies to any conversation, including lawfully closed meetings under the Illinois Open Meetings Act. What that means is that while a recording of a closed meeting is required by the Illinois Open Meetings Act, an individual in a closed meeting making his or her own recording without the knowledge or consent of others present in the closed meeting would violate the Eavesdropping statute in Illinois. This case discusses the “fear of crime” exception to the Illinois Eavesdropping Act.

Mary Carroll called her coworker, Jim Kelliher late on a Thanksgiving Day. According to Carroll, she was “riled up” and she snapped on the phone. Kelliher’s wife overheard Carroll on the other end of the phone and recorded the conversation without Carroll’s knowledge. Kelliher was frightened after the phone call, and he reported it to his supervisors at Merrill Lynch. Carroll was fired for the phone call and initiated this suit as a violation of the Illinois Eavesdropping statute. The Illinois Eavesdropping statute prohibits recording conversations without the consent of all the parties and the subsequent use of that recording. 720 ILCS 5/14-2 (a)(1). The fear of crime exemption allows unauthorized recordings under a reasonable suspicion that another party to the conversation is committing, about to commit, or has committed a criminal offense against that person or a member of his or her immediate household. To determine a reasonable suspicion, the exemption requires that (1) a subjective suspicion that criminal activity is afoot, and (2) that the suspicion be objectively reasonable.

Carroll argues that the failure of Kelliher to call the police means that there was a lack of reasonable suspicion. However, Illinois criminalizes phone calls made with the intent to abuse, threaten or harass any person at the called number. 720 ILCS 135/1-1(2). Carroll’s own admission that she was angry and snapped on the phone can be used as evidence of the abusive nature of the phone call. Further, Kelliher’s wife had a reasonable suspicion of a crime, so her recording fell under the fear of crime exemption.

Rachel Prezek, IASB Law Clerk

Local newspapers asked the Jo Daviess County Board to produce tapes of two closed meetings discussing real estate with the City Council of Galena and the Jo Daviess County Planning and Development Committee; the County Board refused. The newspapers filed a lawsuit seeking publication of the tapes and minutes claiming certain peripheral discussions about a lease during the closed meetings were not exempt from disclosure under the Open Meetings Act. On July 18, 2007, the Second District Appellate Court reversed and the Jo Daviess circuit court and ruled that no distinction for purposes of exemption from Open Meetings Act exists between the discussions concerning the “material terms of the lease” and the “peripheral matters such as how the lessee would utilize the space rented”. The court asserted that nothing in the Open Meetings Act draws a distinction between “material” matters and “peripheral” ones and creating such a distinction between them would be “exceedingly difficult to apply” because the line between “material” and “peripheral” terms “is bound to be either arbitrary or vague.” Therefore, the Second District held that the Open Meetings Act applies to tapes and minutes of the entirety of an executive/closed session - even to topics that may be peripheral and could be redacted.

A former employee sued school board members alleging that two of their closed board meetings violated the Open Meetings Act. In the first meeting, the school board voted to go into closed session “to discuss an employee matter, specifically the reclassification of employment” without giving a statutory citation. The court found that the Act does not require a statutory citation; it requires “a citation to the specific exception contained in” the Act. Said the court: “By referring to an ‘employee matter’ and ‘reclassification of employment,’ defendants adequately identified the exception in section 2(c)(1). An additional citation to the statutory subsection might have been helpful but was not required. Citing the exception was sufficient.”

The second meeting being scrutinized violated the Open Meetings Act because the reason given for going into closed session – “litigation” – was not supported by required information. Said the court: “The ‘litigation’ exception is a forked path. If the litigation has been filed and is pending, the public body need only announce that in the proposed closed meeting, it will discuss litigation that has been filed and is pending. If the litigation has not yet been filed, the public body must (1) find that the litigation is probable or imminent and (2) record and enter into the minutes the basis for that finding. Evidently, the legislature intended to prevent public bodies from using the distant possibility of litigation as a pretext for closing their meetings to the public.” The court remanded the case to the trial court for a remedy determination.