Recent Court Decisions

A public body posted its agenda 48 hours before a meeting as OMA requires. Then, it amended its agenda 29 hours before the meeting. The amendment deleted two action items upon which the public body would vote on at a later date. The intent of the amendment was to inform the public that the items would not be voted upon during the meeting as previously announced. In this case, the public still had at least 48 hours’ notice of the items for which the public body would take action. The PAC found no violation of OMA.

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

Confidentiality provisions entered into by public bodies are contrary to the specific language of Section 2.20 in FOIA and the legislative intent underlying that section of the law. The PAC found such provisions in settlement agreements are not enforceable and must be released pursuant to FOIA requests.

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

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.