Court Finds in Favor of College that Protected Personal Information of Students from FOIA Release
The BGA submitted a FOIA request to City Colleges of Chicago (College) seeking various education records related to their 2018 graduation rate. The College withheld its responsive records citing Section 7(1)(a) of FOIA, claiming that the educational records contained personally identifying student information (PII) that was prohibited from disclosure by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) without the consent of the students, their parents, or guardians. The BGA sued the College alleging that its response violated FOIA, and the circuit court ruled in favor of BGA, finding that FERPA did not "specifically prohibit" the disclosure of the requested records because FERPA only conditioned the College's receipt of federal funding on its compliance with FERPA, and ordered the College to disclose the records.
The College appealed and the Appellate Court reversed the circuit court's ruling. BGA v. City Colleges of Chicago. In a matter of first impression in Illinois state courts, the Appellate Court examined the interplay between FERPA and FOIA, and concluded that FERPA specifically prohibited the College from disclosing PII in educational records without student, parental, or guardian consent. Thus, the Appellate Court held that the College properly withheld educational records containing PII in response to the FOIA request. The Court also found that the circuit court’s order requiring the College to disclose its records containing PII without consent was unreasonable, because FERPA imposes a binding obligation on schools that accept federal funds and prohibits schools from disclosing PII. As a result, the circuit court’s order for the College to disclose its PII without consent would force the Colleges to violate federal law, and risk losing its federal funding, which is essential to its operations.
The Appellate Court also declined to order the College to disclose its de-identified educational records with PII removed, and instead remanded the case back to the circuit court to review the College's responsive records "in camera" to determine whether the records can be redacted or segregated to protect the disclosure of PII.
Post Authored by Eugene Bolotnikov, Ancel Glink
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