Recent Court Decisions

IASB filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the district to no avail – the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reconsider its decision that a dismissed superintendent was denied procedural due process rights and that the school board members were not entitled to qualified immunity.

The school board dismissed the superintendent for cause before his contract expired. In the pre-termination hearing, it provided him an opportunity to address the board. The superintendent, believing the process was unfair, refused to participate in the hearing. The Seventh Circuit Court rejected the district’s argument that the superintendent waived his due process rights and held that the board should have given him full trial-type procedural due process. The availability of a post-termination lawsuit for breach of contract was insufficient, according to the Seventh Circuit, to protect his “present entitlement” to his contractual interests.

Most surprisingly, however, was the Seventh Circuit’s opinion that a reasonable board member would have known his or her conduct was unlawful because the superintendent’s procedural due process rights were clearly established. This finding precipitated the court’s denial of qualified immunity to the individual board members.

[Note: The following case has no precedential value in Illinois but is posted because it is a topic of interest to school officials.]

An assistant principal's liberty interest in his good name and reputation, as related to his employment, was not infringed when a tape-recorded sexually-explicit telephone conversation he had with his secretary was disseminated.

The assistant principal's employment was not terminated, and he was allowed to fulfill his one-year contract. He was later offered a position as a first-grade teacher, but then he secured a position as an administrator in a different district.

The Tribune sought to gain access to information regarding the identities and addresses of the parents of applicants to the University of Illinois. They submitted a request citing the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, which the University denied. The University cited an exemption allowing them to withhold information prohibited from disclosure by state or federal law as the reason for the denial. The court did not allow the case to proceed, stating that a federal court would not have subject-matter jurisdiction. Because the case was about interpreting the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, a state law of Illinois, the case would need to be heard by an Illinois State Court.

Jared Boyer, IASB Extern

This opinion upheld binding opinion from the Public Access Counselor, PAO 11-6. PAO 11-6 required the City of Champaign to provide certain emails and text messages stored on public officials’ private computers and electronic devices in response to a FOIA request. The opinion narrowed PAO 11-6 by instructing that emails and text messages stored on private devices of public officials are “public records” only when the communications are sent or received during a public meeting (as opposed to being public records when they “pertain to the transaction of public business. . .”).

School officials should contact their local board attorney for assistance. It is worth noting that it may be possible to transform a private non-public record into a public record by accessing private emails and text messages that have nothing to do with the “transaction of public business” during public meetings. At the time of publication, it is unclear whether this case will be appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.

A newspaper filed a FOIA request seeking two performance evaluations of the superintendent and a letter from the board to the superintendent explaining its discontent. If the documents fell into an exemption listed in FOIA, they would be “per se” exempt from disclosure. Here the requested documents were properly placed in the superintendent’s personnel file and were thus exempt from disclosure.