Recent Court Decisions

In July 2014 Rosemary Vega (Vega) was removed from a public meeting of the Chicago Board of Education (Board) for “disruptive behavior,” and she was subsequently prohibited from attending any Board meetings until March 2017. Vega sued the Board, alleging her removal and prohibition from attending meetings violated her First Amendment Free Speech rights.

Reviewing the facts, the Court discovered that over a fourth month period, Vega had demonstrated “a persistent and escalating willingness to cause disturbances during Board meetings.” In March 2014, Vega exceeded her allotted two-minute speaking time and had to be ushered from the podium. In May 2014, Vega stated she would “get kicked out of the Board meeting every month for two minutes for the next how many years you got of life.” In July 2014, Vega violated the Board’s Public Participation Guidelines by rushing up the dais, yelling at a Board member, shaking her fist, and interrupting another speaker. Vega’s actions were perceived as threatening by security officers and she refused to leave when asked to.

The Court found that the Board’s enforcement of its Guidelines did not violate the First Amendment because they were content-neutral, and were not speaker- or content-based. The Court also found that the Board’s 2.5 year ban on Vega attending Board meetings was proper because it was narrowly tailored – it “did not burden more of Vega’s speech than necessary to maintain order during Board meetings or to ensure that members of the public who wished to address the Board in accordance with the Guidelines had that opportunity.” Finally, the Court found that even when Vega was prohibited from attending Board meetings, she had ample alternative channels of communication left, including meeting individually with Board members during their office hours and the ability to submit written testimony to the Board.

The Cook County Health and Hospital System (CCHHS) violated FOIA by improperly withholding an amendment to an agreement for mental health services showing the fixed monthly amount that CCHHS pays for each recipient of services. On March 28, 2018, CCHHS received a FOIA request for a copy of an amendment to an agreement that was signed by CCHHS on May 15, 2015, and that showed a fixed monthly rate that CCHHS agreed to pay for mental health services via the amendment. On March 29, 2018, CCHHS denied the FOIA request, alleging that the requestor had already requested the very same document on May 22, 2015, and that CCHHS had provided the document to her with appropriate redactions. As a result, CCHHS denied the 2018 FOIA request under Section 3(g) of FOIA. Section 3(g) permits a public body to deny a request as unduly burdensome if it is a repeat request from the same requestor for the same records that are unchanged or identical to records that were “previously provided or properly denied.”

While the older, May 2015 FOIA request had in fact been for the same record, the PAC had actually reviewed that request and found that CCHHS’s redaction of the fixed monthly rate was improper. Because CCHHS’s original redaction was improper, the PAC found that CCHHS could not deny the requestor’s 2018 request using Section 3(g). The PAC ordered CCHHS to provide the requestor with the document she sought, without redacting the financial information at issue.

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

The City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (Department) violated FOIA by improperly redacting property index numbers (PINs) from records responsive to a FOIA request. On February 28, 2018, the Department received a FOIA request for a list of properties within Chicago that had been granted a Commissioner’s Adjustment under a shared housing ordinance, including the PINs for the properties. The Department responded but redacted the PINs, and the requestor submitted the matter to the PAC for review. In response to the PAC’s inquiries, the Department stated the PINs were exempt as both “private information” under Section 7(1)(b) of FOIA and “personal information” whose disclosure would constitute an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” under Section 7(1)(c) of FOIA.

FOIA defines “private information” as “unique identifiers, including a person's social security number, driver's license number, employee identification number, biometric identifiers, personal financial information, passwords or other access codes, medical records, home or personal telephone numbers, and personal email addresses. Private information also includes home address and personal license plates, except as otherwise provided by law or when compiled without possibility of attribution to any person.” Because PINs are unique to properties, not to people, the PAC found they are not “unique identifiers” exempt from disclosure as private information under Section 7(1)(b).

The PAC further reasoned that even if PINs were considered “unique identifiers,” there is no significant personal privacy interest in information that is public record under State law (as PINs are under the Property Tax Code) and is readily available on governmental websites. For this same reason, the PAC held that the Department could not claim the disclosure of PINs would constitute an “unwanted invasion of personal privacy.” The PAC ordered the Department to provide the requestor with the responsive list of properties, including their PINs.

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

On June 29, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (Court) issued its decision in Gary B. v. Snyder, et al., holding that access to literacy is not a fundamental right. The Plaintiffs in this case were minor children who attend or attended public schools in Detroit, and who alleged that the conditions in their public schools were so poor and so inadequate that they did not receive even a minimally adequate education – specifically, access to literacy. As a result, Plaintiffs claimed they were: (1) deprived of a fundamental right in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and (2) disparately treated based on their race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Before getting to the merits of Plaintiffs’ claims, the Court first considered whether they had sued the proper Defendants – the State of Michigan and state officials. Defendants argued they could not be sued because they did not operate Detroit’s public schools and, even if they did, they were immune from suit under the Eleventh Amendment. However, the Court found that Defendants did control Detroit’s public schools because the state had appointed an emergency financial manager for the schools and had eventually designated the schools for supervision by a state school reform/redesign officer. Because the State of Michigan and its officials effectively controlled Detroit public schools, they were appropriately sued by Plaintiffs. Moreover, they did not qualify for Eleventh Amendment immunity.

Looking to the Constitutional questions, the Court reviewed numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases to determine whether access to literacy as a fundamental right had been addressed. Finding that it had not, the Court “cautiously” tried to answer that question itself. The Court acknowledged both that “the conditions and outcomes of Plaintiffs’ schools, as alleged, are nothing short of devastating” and that “literacy – and the opportunity to obtain it – is of incalculable importance.” Even so, the Court reasoned that access to literacy is not a fundamental right because declaring it a fundamental right “requires a finding that neither liberty nor justice would exist absent state-provided literacy access.” The Court held that the Due Process Clause does not demand that a state affirmatively provide each child with a defined, minimum level of education by which the child can attain literacy.

Finally, the Court considered whether Plaintiffs had stated a valid Equal Protection claim. Because access to literacy was not a fundamental right, Plaintiffs’ deprivation of it merely needed to be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose. The Court found that Plaintiffs had not plausibly pled that the government’s decisions were irrational, and so their Equal Protection claim failed. The case was dismissed with prejudice, but Plaintiffs plan to appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lawsuits seeking to have education declared a fundamental constitutional right are not uncommon, however they are usually filed in state court based upon a state’s constitution. In 1996, the Illinois Supreme Court found that “while education is certainly a vitally important governmental function, it is not a fundamental individual right for equal protection purposes, and thus the appropriate standard of review is the rational basis test.” Committee for Educational Rights et al., v. Edgar, 174 Ill.2d 1, at 37 (Ill. 1996).

On June 19, 2018, the Third District Appellate Court of Illinois (Court) found that the Joliet Police Department (Joliet) properly refused to disclose an officer’s disciplinary records which were more than four years old based upon Section 7.5(q) of FOIA (5 ILCS 140/7.5(q)) and Section 8 of the Personnel Records Review Act (“PRRA,” 820 ILCS 40/8).

Here, FOIA requestor Maceo Johnson requested the disciplinary history of one of Joliet’s officers. Joliet denied Johnson’s FOIA request, citing Section 8 of the PRRA, which prohibits employers from releasing to a third party records of disciplinary action which are more than four years old. “Information prohibited from being disclosed under the Personnel Records Review Act” is statutorily exempt from inspection and copying by Section 7.5(q) of FOIA. Johnson, however, argued that the PRRA’s prohibitions do not apply to FOIA requests because Section 11 of the PRRA states that “This Act shall not be construed to diminish a right of access to records already otherwise provided by law, provided that disclosure of performance evaluations under the [FOIA] shall be prohibited.”

Reviewing the interplay of FOIA and the PRRA, and interpreting them so that no word or phrase would be rendered superfluous or meaningless, the Court found that Johnson’s argument failed. “To avoid rendering section 7.5(q) of FOIA wholly meaningless, we find that the prohibition on disclosure of disciplinary records more than four years old, found in section 8 of the [PRRA], is applicable to FOIA requests and that such records are thus exempt from FOIA.”