Appellate Court Sends FOIA Challenge Back to Circuit Court
In 2022, a requester sued a county board, a county sheriff, and a county’s state’s attorney’s office (defendants) for several alleged FOIA violations. During the litigation, defendants requested the circuit court to: (1) allow defendants to designate one of the requester’s FOIA requests as unduly burdensome because defendants identified over 69,000 pages of responsive records to the request, or (2) in the alternative, to perform an in camera review of defendants responsive records to assess whether FOIA exemptions applied to the records. The circuit court appointed a special master to review defendants’ 69,000 pages of records to determine which parts of the records qualified for exemptions, and ordered the requester to pay the special master’s retainer prior to the start of their services. The requester did not make the court-ordered retainer payment, which led the circuit court to rule in favor of defendants, finding that the requester’s FOIA request was unduly burdensome, and that the requester failed to comply with the court’s prior order requiring pre-payment of the special master’s fees for review services.
After the requester appealed the circuit court’s ruling, an Illinois Appellate Court: (1) held that the circuit court erred when it appointed a special master and required the requester to pay the special master’s review services fees, and (2) ordered the circuit court to re-instate the requester’s FOIA lawsuit and conduct that proceeding in accordance with FOIA. Dorman v. Madison County.
The Appellate Court reasoned that FOIA places the burden of justifying nondisclosure squarely on public bodies, and that FOIA contemplates that the court itself will resolve disputes concerning exemptions and disclosure. The Appellate Court determined that the circuit court’s inherent authority to control their proceedings may not be exercised in a way that conflicts with, or expands beyond, a legislatively prescribed statutory scheme. Here, the Appellate Court determined that the FOIA statute does not permit courts to (i) delegate their express statutory in camera review responsibilities to third parties, (ii) impose compliance or review-related costs on a requester, or (iii) condition the continuation of a requester’s FOIA action on their payment for special master services.
Post Authored by Eugene Boltnikov, Ancel Glink
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