Recent Court Decisions

Update on the case which serves as a reminder to school officials that nothing online is truly anonymous. The Illinois Supreme Court agreed with the trial court’s order requiring the disclosure of the identity of an anonymous poster of allegedly defamatory comments about a county board candidate on a newspaper’s Internet message board.

8/26/2015: Doe’s attorney has filed a motion to postpone the enforcement of the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision. This motion will attempt to maintain the anonymity of Doe until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to hear an appeal.

See the information posted in Hadley v. Doe, - N.E.3d--, 2014 WL 1847824, (Ill.App. 2 Dist.,2014) for more background.

Shanell M. Bowden, IASB Law Clerk

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the school officials in this case should not be viewed as law enforcement agents, and the statements made by a young child to the teachers were not given with the “primary purpose of creating an out-of-court substitute for trial testimony.” This decision is important to school officials because the Court recognized that school teachers who ask their students questions about suspected child abuse are not acting as law enforcement officers but instead fulfilling their mandated state duties to keep children safe.

Confidentiality provisions in settlement agreements that directly relate to a public body’s use of public funds will not exempt the public body from having to provide such records under FOIA. FOIA specifically provides that all settlement agreements entered into by or on behalf of a public body are public records subject to inspection and copying by the public. In addition to the issue above, when responding to FOIA requests, public bodies must perform searches calculated to uncover the requested documents.

The take away here is that public bodies (a) may not use confidentiality agreements as a shield from responding to FOIA, and (b) must perform reasonable searches calculated to uncover the requested documents.

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

For the second time, the PAC has told public bodies they cannot discuss budgetary matters even when they directly or indirectly affect employees during a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2(c)(1) of OMA.

To the extent that a public body is required to discuss the relative merits of individual employees as a result of its fiscal decision, such discussion may properly be closed to the public under section 2(c)(1) of OMA. But, the underlying budgetary discussions leading to those decisions may not be closed to the public. (Emphasis added). See PAO 12-011. The bottom line here is that public bodies may not use an OMA exemption to get at underlying budget issues.

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

An individual challenged a ruling that his prior conviction for forgery made him ineligible to hold the office of a school board member because it is an “infamous crime.” Illinois prohibits school board members who have been convicted of infamous crimes from holding office.

Interestingly, while this case was being decided, the school board member’s forgery conviction was expunged. However, because that fact did not exist while the case was being appealed, the court held that it was not relevant to its review. This fact leaves the question open as to whether this individual will now be eligible to hold the office of school board member.