No Violation of FOIA Where Records Not in Possession of Responding Public Body
An Illinois Appellate Court rejected an inmate's claims in a FOIA lawsuit against a sheriff's department in King v. Livingston County Sheriff's Office.
An inmate filed a FOIA request with a sheriff's office seeking records pertaining to racial profiling by a specific police officer. The sheriff's office responded that it had no responsive records because the officer was not employed by the sheriff's office but a city police department. The inmate sued, and the circuit court ruled in favor of the sheriff's office. On appeal, the Appellate Court also found no violation of FOIA in the sheriff's office's response, holding that the "nonexistence of requested documents is a cognizable affirmative defense" to a FOIA claim. In this case, the sheriff's office was not in possession of the requested record at the time of the request, so there was no FOIA violation in its response to the inmate's request.
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