Recent Court Decisions

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that prayers before a New York town’s board meetings do not violate the First Amendment.

“The town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment by opening its meetings with prayer that comports with our tradition,” said Justice Anthony Kennedy, “and does not coerce participation by nonadherents.”

This decision only addressed the specific factual circumstances presented by the town of Greece, N.Y. Very little guidance about how other communities may participate in prayers without violating the Constitution was offered in this opinion. Contact local board counsel for assistance with how this recent decision applies to your board.

A public body received a FOIA request for its legal bills. It denied the request citing several exemptions under FOIA.

The PAC instructed the parties that records containing the following information must be disclosed:

a. general descriptions of the nature of the services performed by an attorney,

b. dates on which work was performed,

c. the initials of the attorney performing the work,

d. the numbers of hours billed, and

e. the corresponding dollar amount billed for each entry.

The PAC did inform the parties involved that any descriptive entries contained in legal invoice records that describe services rendered, which reveal privileged attorney-client communications may be redacted (withheld or blacked-out on a document that contains exempt and non-exempt records) under section 7(1)(m) of FOIA.

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

The plaintiff sought disclosure of certain documents related to complaints of police misconduct within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in the form of Complaint Registers (CR) and Repeater Lists (RL). RLs were documents about officers who amassed the most misconduct complaints. CRs were related to CPD’s completed investigations into allegations of police misconduct. The issue on appeal was whether the CRs and RLs were “adjudicatory” and exempt under Section 7(1)(n) of FOIA.

On appeal the Court held that both CRs and RLs must be disclosed. They are not exempt under Section 7(1)(n) because neither were part of any adjudication. In its ruling, the Court held that it was possible that another FOIA exemption may apply to the CRs and RLs, e.g., the deliberative process exemption. However, whether the deliberative-process exemption applied would be resolved after an “in camera” (private) inspection by the trial court judge after the case was sent back to the trial court for more proceedings.

In camera inspections and FOIA exemptions: Note that the public body bears the burden of establishing that public records fall within a claimed FOIA exemption. To meet the burden, and to assist the court in making its determination, the public body must provide a detailed justification for its claimed exemption, addressing the requested documents specifically and in a manner allowing for the party that is requesting the records to rebut.

A newspaper submitted a FOIA request to the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (Department) for the number of claims made against 22 named physicians. The Department presented evidence that it did not keep such a record in the ordinary course of business and urged that it was not required to create it. The Department did not waive this argument by failing to assert it during proceedings before the Public Access Counselor. The Court, quoting from earlier decisions, found that a request to inspect or copy must reasonably identify a public record and not general data, information, or statistics. FOIA “does not compel the agency to provide answers to questions posed by the inquirer.” Here, the Department was not obligated under FOIA to answer the newspaper’s general inquiry question since this would have required the creation of a new record.

The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by failing to timely comply with a records request from the Uptown People’s Law Center (Uptown). IDOC turned over the requested records two weeks after Uptown filed a petition in court. FOIA requires a trial court to award attorney fees to any person who “prevails” in a proceeding to enforce FOIA. The question was whether a party can “prevail” under FOIA absent a court order. An earlier decision from the Second District Court of Appeals found that a party does not “prevail” under FOIA unless a court issues an order requiring compliance. Here, the First District found that a plaintiff may obtain attorney fees under FOIA regardless of the extent that he or she is successful in a court action. It held that court-ordered relief is not a prerequisite to an award of attorney fees under FOIA. The Court still denied Uptown an award of attorney fees. It cited an Illinois Supreme Court decision holding that an attorney representing him- or herself is not entitled to an award of attorney fees. Uptown was represented by in-house lawyers and, thus, was not required to spend additional funds specifically to pursue the FOIA request. The Court found that Uptown was not entitled to receive attorney fees that were never incurred.