Recent Court Decisions

A school board (Board) violated the public recital requirement in Section 2.06(e) of OMA during its January 28, 2019 meeting, when it failed to identify a teacher by name before issuing the teacher a disciplinary action called a notice to remedy. Section 2(e) of OMA requires a public body to make a “public recital of the nature of the matter being considered and other information that will inform the public of the business being conducted” before it takes final action on the matter. 5 ILCS 120/2(e). In the case of Board of Education of Springfield School District No. 186 v. Attorney General, 77 N.E.3d 625 (Ill. 2017), the Illinois Supreme Court, in interpreting the meaning of Section 2(e), held that “the recital must announce the nature of the matter under consideration, with sufficient detail to identify the particular transaction or issue, but need not provide an explanation of its terms or its significance.” Relying on the interpretation from the Springfield case, the Public Access Counselor (PAC) found that the board’s mere public recital of the title of the resolution authorizing the notice to remedy, without identifying the teacher that was the subject of the discipline, did not give enough information to identify the particular transaction. As a result, the PAC ordered the Board to re-vote on the notice to remedy resolution and before voting, to provide a public recital of the matter that included reciting the teacher’s name. This opinion is binding only to the parties involved and may be appealed pursuant to State law.

The Village of Ringwood (Village) violated FOIA by failing to comply with, deny in whole or in part, or otherwise appropriately respond to a FOIA request. On October 30, 2018, the Requestor submitted a FOIA request for records concerning public meetings of the Village Board of Trustees from April 2016 through October 2018. Receiving no response by November 8, 2018, the Requestor contacted the PAC. The PAC sent two letters to the Village but received no response. The PAC then left a voicemail message for the Village Clerk, but again received no response. As of February 19, 2019, the Village had not responded to the PAC.

The PAC held that the Village violated Section 3(d) of FOIA by failing, within five business days after receiving the October 30, 2018 FOIA request, to provide the requested records, extend the time for its response pursuant to Section 3(e) of FOIA, or deny the request in whole or in part. The PAC ordered the Village to provide the Requestor with all records responsive to her FOIA request.

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

The Chicago Police Department (Department) violated FOIA by refusing to disclose copies of officer-worn body camera recordings related to a motor vehicle accident. On September 18, 2018, the Petitioner (a law firm) requested, among other items, copies of “any and all” body camera recordings from a particular police officer related to an identified traffic report number. The Department denied this portion of Petitioner’s FOIA request under FOIA Section 7(1)(a), which exempts from disclosure information that is specifically prohibited from disclosure by federal or State law. The specific State law that the Department asserted applied was the Law Enforcement Officer-World Body Camera Act (Body Camera Act). The Body Camera Act generally prohibits the disclosure of body camera recordings under FOIA, except as set forth in Section 10-20(b).

The PAC reviewed Section 10-20(b)(3) of the Body Camera Act, which states that “upon request, the law enforcement agency shall disclose, in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, the recording to the subject of the encounter captured on the recording or to the subject’s attorney, or the officer or his or her legal representative.” When the PAC asked the Department to explain how Section 10-20(b)(3) of the Body Camera Act applied, the Department did not respond. Instead, the Department argued that a body camera recording is not subject to disclosure under FOIA unless it is flagged in accordance with either Section 10-20(b)(1) or (b)(2) of the Body Camera Act. The PAC reviewed the legislative intent of the Body Camera Act and found that even though a recording must be “flagged” under Section 10-20(b)(1) or (b)(2), no flagging is required under Section 10-20(b)(3). As a result, the PAC ordered the Department to disclose the body camera recordings to the Petitioner.

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

A school board (Board) violated Section 2.06(g) of OMA during its October 22, 2018 board meeting by enforcing an unestablished and unrecorded rule limiting the public comment portion of the meeting to 15 minutes. Petitioner asserted that over 100 parents and community members attended this particular board meeting, intending to comment on a recent hiring decision, but the Board announced that “in accordance with board rules they ‘had used before,’” members of the public would be permitted to speak for three minutes each for a total of 15 minutes for all speakers. Due to this 15 minute cap, many attendees were unable to make public comment. Petitioner further noted that even though the Board’s policy manual limited comments to three minutes per person, it did not mention a 15 minute cap.

The Board did not dispute that it capped the public comment to 15 minutes, but it pointed to its Welcome Handout, which describes the Board’s general order of business at board meetings and states “members of the public shall be permitted to make comments at each meeting subject to the following time limitations: 3 minutes per speaker, with a maximum of 15 minutes, per topic, per meeting.” When asked about the discrepancy between Board policy and the Board Welcome Handout, the Board explained that even though the 15 minute cap is not in Board policy, it has been the Board’s practice for at least the last 10 years. The PAC found that “[n]othing in OMA suggests that past practices which have not been formally incorporated into a public body’s rules are established and recorded by the public body within the meaning of [OMA] section 2.06(g), and may be enforced to limit public comment.” Though a public body has inherent authority to conduct its meetings in an efficient manner and need not allow public comment to continue indefinitely, the PAC held that there was no evidence that capping public comment to 15 minutes was necessary to maintain decorum or that extending the comment period would have unduly interfered with the orderly transaction of public business. As a result, the PAC ordered the Board to refrain from applying unestablished and unrecorded rules to restrict public comment at future meetings.

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

In 2016, Shriver National Center of Poverty Law, a non-profit organization, filed three categorical FOIA requests with the Chicago Board of Education seeking employment records related to alleged misconduct of police officers in CPS schools. The Board ultimately denied each request as unduly burdensome under section 3(g) of FOIA and invited the requester to narrow its requests further, which it failed to do. Shriver subsequently sued the Board, claiming its failure to produce the records was a willful violation of FOIA. Each time, the Board provided rather detailed descriptions as to why each search would have been unduly burdensome, namely that the requests would have involved hundreds of man hours to pull the responsive data and redact exempt information. The appellate court accepted these explanations as sufficient to satisfy the requirements under section 3(g), even for the narrowest request for records which the Board claimed involved 600 records from a one-year timeframe.

Finding that the Board’s reasoning for denying the requests was sufficient, it next applied the section 3(g) balancing test, which requires a public body to show that the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest in the requested information. Shriver claimed that it was seeking the records because they were related to the issue of the school-to-prison pipeline. While the court did not question the public importance of the issue, it was not convinced that Shriver’s broad requests for employment records were relevant to that concern. The court held the board had therefore properly invoked the unduly burdensome exemption in FOIA and dismissed the lawsuit. This case may provide helpful guidance to districts seeking to invoke the section 3(g) exemption in those cases where it cannot come to agreement with a requester on the narrowing of a request it considers burdensome to its operations.