Recent Court Decisions

The Cook County Assessor’s Office (Assessor) violated Section 3(d) of FOIA by failing to respond to a FOIA request.

Requestor emailed a FOIA request to the Assessor on July 9, 2019, seeking “all applications for permits, permits, denials of permits and correspondence related to” five properties located in Lincolnwood, Illinois from January 1, 1950 to July 9, 2019. Requestor did not receive a response to his request.

On July 26, 2019, Requestor submitted a Request for Review to the PAC, alleging that the Assessor failed to respond to his FOIA request. On August 1, 2019, the PAC forwarded a copy of the Request for Review to the Assessor and asked the Assessor whether or not it had received and responded to Requestor’s request. The Assessor did not respond to the PAC. As of the date this binding opinion, neither Requestor nor the PAC had received a response from the Assessor’s Office.

Section 3(d) of FOIA states that “each public body shall, promptly, either comply with or deny a request for public records within 5 business days after its receipt of the request…” Because the Assessor did not comply with Section 3(d), the PAC ordered the Assessor to take immediate and appropriate action to provide Requestor with all records responsive to his request, subject only to permissible redactions.

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

The City of Waukegan (City) violated FOIA by refusing to disclose office-worn body camera recordings of the arrest and death of a suspect.

On July 1, 2019, a Waukegan resident (Requestor) submitted a FOIA request to the City for copies of “"all dash Cam, body camera video and audio recordings leading up to as well as the attempted arrest and death of [the arrestee]…[on] Thursday, June 27, 2019." The City provided Requestor with some information from the incident, but denied the requested camera recordings based on Sections 7(1)(d)(i) and 7(1)(d)(vii) of FOIA and the Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act (Body Camera Act, 50 ILCS 706/). Section 7(1)(d)(i) of FOIA states that requests that “interfere with pending or actually and reasonably contemplated law enforcement proceedings conducted by any law enforcement…” may be exempt from FOIA. Section 7(1)(d)(vii) likewise exempts public bodies from FOIA requests that would, “obstruct an ongoing criminal investigation by the agency that is the recipient of the request.” Section 10-20(b) of the Body Camera Act states that “[r]ecordings made with the use of an officer-worn body camera are not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.”

Requestor submitted a Request for Review to PAC on July 18, 2019, contesting the withholding of the camera recordings. The City responded by providing the PAC with copies of the responsive camera recordings, along with related records, and asserting that there were two open investigations related to the suspect. The City argued that “premature disclosure would inhibit impartial resolution" and that “disclosure presents a risk to the safety and the potential of intimidation of witnesses and their families.” The PAC rejected the City’s arguments for non-disclosure, finding them vague and stating that “[t]he City did not explain how disclosure would pose a risk to the life or physical safety of any person” and “did not set forth facts as to how disclosure of these particular body camera recordings would interfere with any ongoing investigation or other law enforcement proceedings.” Moreover, Section 10-20(b) of the Body Camera Act also provides that body camera recordings flagged “due to the filing of a complaint, discharge of a firearm, use of force, arrest or detention, or resulting death or bodily harm” must be disclosed pursuant to FOIA. The PAC ordered the City to immediately disclose copies of the recordings to the Requestor, subject only to any redactions required by the Body Camera Act.

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

The Rushville City Council (Council) violated OMA by refusing to let a non-resident member of the public (Requestor) speak during public comment in violation of Section 2.06(g) of OMA.

Requestor submitted a Request for Review to the PAC on August 1, 2019, alleging that the Council violated OMA by refusing to let her speak at its July 1, 2019 meeting during the public comment session. Requestor said that she stood up to speak but the Mayor dismissed her request, saying “no ma' am, I listened to you for two months and you have no standing to be here, you don’t live in this town, you don't vote in this town and you have no reason to be here. I have heard two months of it and I'm not hearing anymore!'" Requestor asked the Council if the Mayor could do this, and one member responded by saying that, “[the Council would] ask for legal [counsel] to see if the Mayor can do this.”
On August 7, 2019, the PAC forwarded a copy of the Requestor’s Request for Review to the Council, asking it to provide a detailed response to Requestor’s allegations, copies of Council rules governing public comment, and copies of the agenda, minutes, and any recordings of the July 1 meeting. The Council did not provide the PAC with its rules governing public comment, and simply stated they adopted Roberts Rules of Order. The Council also acknowledged that it refused to let Requestor speak on July 1 because she was a non-resident.

Though the Council may set rules regarding public comment, Section 2.06(g) clearly states that “[a]ny person shall be permitted an opportunity to address public officials under the rules established and recorded by the public body.” So even if the Council had adopted a rule prohibiting non-residents from speaking, that would have violated OMA. The PAC ordered the Council to refrain from applying unestablished and unrecorded rules to restrict public comment at future meetings, and to refrain from limiting public comment to City residents.

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

The City of Joliet Police Department (Department) violated FOIA by improperly redacting information from narrative sections of police reports. A reporter (Requestor) submitted a FOIA request to the Department for records regarding the arrests of two named individuals on June 3, 2019. A week later, the Department provided the Requestor with copies of records but redacted nearly the entire narrative sections that described the facts observed at the scene of the arrests. The Department relied on multiple FOIA exemptions for its redactions, including Sections 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(c). On June 13, 2019, the Requestor submitted a Request for Review to the PAC contesting the Department’s redactions of the narrative sections. In responding to the PAC’s inquiries, the Department added an assertion that Section 7(1)(a) of FOIA also applied to exempt the narrative sections from disclosure to the Requestor.

Section 7(1)(a) exempts from disclosure any “[i]nformation specifically prohibited from disclosure by federal or State law or rules and regulations implementing federal or State law.” The Department claimed that Supreme Court Rule 415(c) was just such a State law because it states that “any materials furnished to an attorney pursuant to these rules shall remain in his exclusive custody and be used only for the purposes of conducting his side of the case, and shall be subject to such other terms and conditions as the court may provide." The PAC was not persuaded by this argument and found that Rule 415(c) does not specifically prohibit disclosure of the narratives to the Requestor because he is not a criminal defendant seeking discovery materials for his criminal case.

Reviewing the other exemptions claimed by the Department, the PAC found that while the Department properly redacted discreet private information pursuant to Section 7(1)(b), it  improperly relied upon Section 7(1)(c) to redact the narratives because they “document arrests and because arrests are legitimate matters of public interest that outweigh arrestees' privacy rights” and “the Department failed to prove that any information in the narratives discussing the circumstances surrounding the arrests is exempt from disclosure.”
This opinion is binding only to the parties involved and may be appealed pursuant to State law.

The City of Chicago Department of Public Health (Department) violated FOIA by improperly denying a FOIA request using the trade secrets and commercial information exemption of Section 7(1)(g). On March 29, 2019, the Department received a FOIA request for records concerning the amount of manganese that enters and leaves a business’s facility. On April 12, 2019, the Department provided the Requestor with the requested records for four manganese-bearing material providers’ reports.

Later that day, the Department sent an email to the Requestor stating that the request for manganese reports from S.H. Bell were denied, citing Section 7(1)(g) of FOIA, which exempts, “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person or business where the trade secrets or commercial or financial information are furnished under a claim that they are proprietary, privileged or confidential, and that disclosure of the trade secrets or commercial or financial information would cause competitive harm to the person or business, and only insofar as the claim directly applies to the records requested." The Department’s denial included a statement from S.H. Bell explaining why the information should not be disclosed. On June 9, 2019, the Requestor submitted a Request for Review to the PAC contesting the Department’s withholding of the reports from S.H. Bell.
To withhold a record under Section 7(1)(g), a public body must demonstrate that: 1) the record contains a trade secret or commercial or financial information; 2) it was furnished to the public body by a person or business under a claim of confidentiality; and 3) disclosure of the trade secrets or commercial or financial information would cause competitive harm to that person or business. Because S.H. Bell had submitted its reports to the Department under a claim of confidentiality, the PAC reviewed whether the Department had demonstrated that disclosing the reports would cause competitive harm to S.H. Bell.
Finding no clear and convincing evidence that S.H. Bell would suffer competitive harm, the PAC held that the reports were not exempt from disclosure under Section 7(1)(g) and that the Department violated FOIA by withholding them.

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