A municipal police department denied a FOIA request seeking a video recording of a former deputy chief’s DUI arrest citing Section
7(1)(n) of FOIA, which exempts records relating to a public body’s adjudication
of employee grievances or disciplinary cases. After the requester submitted a
request for review with the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor (PAC) challenging the denial, the PAC issued its fourth binding
opinion of 2025 concluding that the Village improperly withheld the video recording. PAC
Op. 25-004.
The Village argued that
because the video recording was used as evidence in an
adjudicatory proceeding to determine the appropriate disciplinary measures to
impose against the former deputy chief, that the recording was therefore
“related to” an adjudicatory proceeding of an employee disciplinary matter.
However, the PAC disagreed that the video was “related to” the adjudicatory
proceeding, because it was created before any disciplinary
proceeding took place and existed independently on the subsequent adjudication.
Instead, the PAC determined that records can only “relate to” an
adjudication within the meaning of the FOIA exemption contained in Section 7(l)(n) if they are created in the
process of conducting the adjudication itself.
Post Authored by Eugene Bolotnikov, Ancel Glink