Court Finds Requests for Electronic Records Are Not Unduly Burdensome

Court Finds Requests for Electronic Records Are Not Unduly Burdensome

  Monday, July 30, 2018    Julie Tappendorf

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Those of you who regularly read the blog or attend our FOIA speeches are likely familiar with the case of Hites v. Waubonsee Community College. We previously reported on the appellate court’s 2016 decision in that case, in which it found that individual data points within an electronic database are public records subject to FOIA. The appellate court also remanded the case to the trial court to address the College's argument that complying with the following 7 FOIA requests qualified as "unduly burdensome": 

1) the zip codes of people taking the National Safety Council’s Defensive Driving Course in 2011, 

2) the zip codes of people taking GED classes in fall of 2011 at the Aurora campus, 

3) the zip codes of all people taking ESL classes in the fall of 2011 at the Aurora campus, 

4) the raw input for the ”city” field on the student registration forms for all students in the fall 2011 at the Aurora campus, 

5) the raw input for the “county code” field on the student registration forms for all students in the fall of 2011 at the Aurora campus, 

6) the raw input for the “US citizen” field on the student registration forms for all students in the fall of 2011 at the Aurora campus, and 

7) the raw input for the “Are you in the United States on a visa-nonresident Alien” field on the student registration forms for all students in the fall of 2011 at the Aurora campus.

Trial Court Ruling

Back at the trial court level, the College argued that compliance with these remaining 7 requests would be unduly burdensome because the College's database system is complex and the data did not reside in any single database or report. and because of the amount of staff time required to respond to all of these requests.

In considering the "unduly burdensome" argument, the court looked at the following three elements:

1) compliance with the request as stated must be unduly burdensome,

2) there is no way to narrow the request, and

3) the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest in the requested information. 

The trial court found that the 7 requests were unduly burdensome as testimony showed that a response to all requests would like take over 20 personnel days, which would impede College staff’s ability to perform their other duties.  Further, the trial court found that some of the requests would require searching databases that were not in the control of the College.  The trial court also found that the burden on the College outweighed the public interest because the requester only sought the demographic information to speculate about what businesses the students might frequent.

Appellate Court Ruling

Hites (the requester) appealed the case, and the appellate court reversed and remanded the case to the trial court, finding that the record did not support the trial court's ruling in favor of the College that response to the FOIA request would be an undue burden. Hites v. Waubonsee Community College, 2018 ILApp 2d 170617, July 20, 2018.

With regard to the first element - that compliance would be unduly burdensome - the appellate court found that the College’s alleged burden was improperly padded with time that staff would spend on other activities.  The appellate court determined that the record did not show that It would take weeks or even months to respond to the requests.   Further, the appellate court found that the record did not show that outside databases would need to be searched to obtain the requested information.  Rather, the information could all be retrieved from two databases which were under the control of the College. 

 As for the second element - that there is no way to narrow the request - the appellate court looked to Section 3(g) of FOIA, which requires that the public body extend the requester an opportunity to narrow the request.  The court found that the trial court erred as it did not make a necessary finding as to whether the 7 requests could be narrowed. 

For the third element - whether the public interest in the records outweighs the burden on the public body - the appellate court noted that while the trial court only identified one public interest - to learn student demographics in order to speculate about business, other public interests were contained in the record.  The appellate court noted that the requester sought the data to determine whether the College was fulfilling promises regarding the construction of a new campus, whether it was working in the City’s best interest, whether certain agreements between the College and the City needed to be revisited, and whether students were being sent to campuses outside Aurora.  The appellate court found all of these reasons to be legitimate public interests, which do outweigh the burden on the public body.  

This case is significant as it shows the high burden that must be met for a public body to claim records are unduly burdensome.

Post Authored by Erin Pell, Ancel Glink