After a federal law
enforcement agency did not respond to a FOIA request seeking records relating
to a named person and his application for legal permanent residency, the
requester filed a lawsuit claiming the agency violated the federal FOIA
statute. During the litigation, the agency disclosed several responsive
records, but withheld others citing a federal FOIA exemption that protects certain law enforcement records related to ongoing enforcement proceedings. The
district court ruled that (1) the requester was not entitled to a declaratory
judgement that ICE violated FOIA solely because ICE did not timely respond to
his FOIA request, (2) that ICE properly withheld certain records under the federal FOIA statute, but needed to disclose certain personal information about the
requester within the records, and (3) that the FOIA statute provides an
adequate remedy for delayed disclosures, which precluded the requester’s claim
under the Administrative Procedure Act.

After the requester appealed,
the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s
rulings. Libarov
v. United States Immigr. & Customs Enf’t. First, the Seventh Circuit rejected the requester’s argument that he was entitled to relief because the request became moot once
the agency disclosed its responsive records, and there was no “case or controversy”
regarding the adequacy of the records disclosed, so the requestor could not
seek a declaratory judgment resulting solely from a delayed response. 

Second, the Seventh Circuit agreed that the agency properly withheld some
records under the law enforcement exemption because the district court had reviewed
the record in camera, and had an adequate factual basis to determine
that (1) the records were compiled for law enforcement purposes and (2)
disclosing parts of the records could reasonably be expected to interfere with
the agency’s enforcement proceedings.

Finally, the Seventh Circuit found that the requestor could not seek relief under the Administrative Procedure Act for a violation of FOIA, because the FOIA statute provided
an adequate remedy to a requester seeking the disclosure of documents, namely a
court order requiring compliance with FOIA.

Although this case interprets
the federal FOIA statute, the Illinois FOIA statute is patterned after the
federal statute, so decisions interpreting federal FOIA are sometimes relevant to
construing similar provisions in the Illinois law.

Post Authored by Eugene Bolotnikov, Ancel Glink