2018 IL App (1st) 171846 

FIRST DISTRICT 

FIRST DIVISION 

December 3, 2018 

No. 1-17-1846 

) 

SARGENT SHRIVER NATIONAL CENTER ON ) Appeal from the 

POVERTY LAW, INC., ) Circuit Court of 

) Cook County. 

Plaintiff-Appellant, ) 

) No. 2016 CH 16301 

v. ) 

) Honorable 

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF ) Kathleen Pantle, 

CHICAGO, ) Judge Presiding. 

) 

Defendant-Appellee. ) 

) 

PRESIDING JUSTICE MIKVA delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 

Justices Pierce and Griffin concurred in the judgment and opinion. 

OPINION 

¶ 1 Plaintiff, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, Inc. (Shriver), is a 

nonprofit legal and policy advocacy organization for low-income individuals and families. In 

June 2016, Shriver made three requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA or Act) 

(5 ILCS 140/1 et seq. (West 2016)) to the Board of Education of the City of Chicago (Board) for 

the release of certain records regarding policing in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Shriver 

allegedly sought these records because of its concern that student discipline and arrests 

contribute to a school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects minority children. 

¶ 2 In each instance, the Board denied Shriver’s request in writing, explained why 

compliance would be unduly burdensome, and invited Shriver to narrow its request. Following 
 

 

 

 

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the third denial, Shriver sued the Board for willful violation of FOIA. Following briefing and 

argument, the circuit court granted the Board’s motion to dismiss Shriver’s complaint with 

prejudice, for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted. For the reasons that 

follow, we affirm. 

¶ 3 I. BACKGROUND 

¶ 4 Attached to and incorporated by reference into Shriver’s complaint were its three records 

requests and the Board’s three denials. The first request, sent electronically through the CPS 

FOIA portal on June 2, 2016, was for complaints made to CPS, from 2012 to 2016, involving 

police officers or security guards stationed inside CPS schools. Shriver alleged that, immediately 

upon receiving the request, the Board sent an automated reply seeking an extension of FOIA’s 

standard five-day response period of five additional business days in which to respond. On June 

10, 2016, six business days after receiving Shriver’s request, the Board denied the request. The 

Board explained that it could not generate a report containing the requested information, stating: 

“The District does not maintain an overall ‘complaints’ database and does not, in 

the ordinary course of business, maintain or generate reports showing complaints made to 

CPS involving police officers or security guards inside schools or any particular type of 

school employee or contractor. Therefore, the District has no electronic means to 

generate the report you request.” 

¶ 5 The Board also explained why, given the nature of its records and the scope of Shriver’s 

request, it believed compliance would be unduly burdensome: 

“The District’s records on complaints could be located in a multitude of paper 

files, e-mails, individual complaint letters, discipline files, investigation reports, to name 

a few. Furthermore, such complaint records could be located at any or all of the District’s 

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administrative offices and/or 600+ CPS schools that would require individual outreach to 

assemble responsive records. Therefore, pursuant to 5 ILCS 140/3(g), your request is 

unduly burdensome as the burden on the District to search for possible responsive records 

outweighs any possible public interest in the information. *** [T]he District could face 

hundreds of man hours just to search discipline records alone to identify complaints 

against security personnel and police officers that led to disciplinary action.” 

¶ 6 The Board invited Shriver to narrow and clarify its request by providing a shorter time 

frame or by specifying the type of documents it was seeking, where the complaints may have 

been submitted to and by whom, and whether the complaints were made in connection with a 

judicial or an administrative proceeding. 

¶ 7 Before it even received the Board’s response, however, Shriver sent a second, narrower, 

electronic request on June 8, 2016, seeking “[a]lleged employee misconduct[ ] reports involving 

in school police officers in any capacity entered into the VERIFY system in 2014.” Shriver 

alleged that the Board again sent an automated reply seeking an extension of five business days 

in which to respond. And six business days after Shriver’s request, on June 16, 2016, the Board 

again denied the request, explaining that, although Shriver had identified a particular database 

and narrowed its request to a single year, the request was still unduly burdensome: 

“The District’s VERIFY system does not include a field to identify ‘in-school police 

officer’ therefore we have no way to query the VERIFY system for the incident reports 

you request. The only way to identify responsive incident reports would be to 

(1) program a data pull for all incidents recorded in VERIFY as ‘alleged employee 

misconduct’ which is estimated at more than 600 incidents for 2014, [and] (2) review the 

individual narrative description entered for each incident to determine if ‘police officer’ 

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is noted. Note that there is no CPS employee job title for In-School Police Officer. 

*** [T]he District would face hundreds of man hours to research and identify 

responsive incident reports and then also redact the reports to remove personally 

identifiable student information and other information exempt from release under FOIA.” 

¶ 8 The Board again invited Shriver to narrow or clarify its request, and on June 16, 2016, 

Shriver made its third and final request, for all “[a]lleged employee misconduct[ ] reports 

[ ]entered into the VERIFY system in 2014.” Shriver alleged that the Board again sent an 

automated reply seeking an extension of five days for its response. Seven business days after 

Shriver’s request, on June 27, 2016, the Board denied the request, providing the following 

explanation: 

“Your request is categorical and voluminous in nature. A search of ‘alleged 

employee misconduct reports entered into the VERIFY system in 2014’ yielded 635 

results. The District would face hundreds of man hours to review responsive incident 

reports and then also redact the reports to remove personally identifiable student 

information and other information exempt from release under FOIA. The time and 

resources required to fulfill this request outweigh any public interest in these records and 

would clearly burden the operations of the District.” 

¶ 9 On December 16, 2016, Shriver sued the Board, asserting three claims of willful violation 

of FOIA, one for each of its denied requests. Shriver additionally alleged that it was improper for 

the Board, as part of its routine handling of FOIA requests, to automatically take a five-day 

extension of time in which to respond to requests. Shriver sought a declaration that the Board 

had violated FOIA and an order requiring the Board to produce the requested records, enjoining 

it from taking extensions via automated response, imposing civil penalties for willful violations, 

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and awarding Shriver attorney fees and costs as a prevailing party. 

¶ 10 On March 20, 2017, the Board moved to dismiss Shriver’s complaint, pursuant to section 

2-615 of the Code of Civil Procedure (Code) (735 ILCS 5/2-615 (West 2016)), for failure to state 

a claim on which relief could be granted. The Board argued that Shriver had failed to allege that 

the Board had willfully or intentionally failed to comply with FOIA or had otherwise acted in 

bad faith. In response, Shriver insisted that, at the pleading stage, it only needed to allege that it 

requested public documents from the Board and that its requests were denied; it was the Board’s 

burden to prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that it would have been unduly burdensome 

to produce the requested records. 

¶ 11 In its written order entered on July 14, 2017, the circuit court dismissed Shriver’s 

complaint with prejudice. The court agreed with the Board that section 3(g) of FOIA (5 ILCS 

140/3(g) (West 2016)) “requires only that a public body specify in writing the reasons 

compliance would be unduly burdensome and the extent to which compliance would burden the 

public body’s operations.” The court found that the five-day extensions of time taken by the 

Board were proper, the Board’s written responses contained “paragraphs of explanations for why 

the requests were unduly burdensome and why they could not be complied with,” and the Board 

had no additional burden to prove undue burden by clear and convincing evidence,” a standard 

the court concluded only applied to the record-specific exemptions found in section 7 of FOIA 

(id. § 7). The court ruled that Shriver had failed to allege any facts which, if true, would establish 

that the Board’s refusal to produce the records was willful and intentional or otherwise made in 

bad faith. This appeal followed. 

¶ 12 II. JURISDICTION 

¶ 13 The circuit court dismissed Shriver’s complaint with prejudice on July 14, 2017, and 

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Shriver timely filed its notice of appeal from that order on July 24, 2017. We have jurisdiction 

over this matter pursuant to Illinois Supreme Court Rules 301 and 303, governing appeals from 

final judgments in civil cases. Ill. S. Ct. R. 301 (eff. Feb. 1, 1994); R. 303 (eff. July 1, 2017). 

¶ 14 III. ANALYSIS 

¶ 15 A motion to dismiss under section 2-615 “challenges the legal sufficiency of [a] 

complaint based upon defects apparent on its face.” Khan v. Deutsche Bank AG, 2012 IL 

112219, ¶ 47. “The essential question is whether the allegations of the complaint, when 

construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, are sufficient to establish a cause of action 

upon which relief may be granted.” Cochran v. Securitas Security Services USA, Inc., 2017 IL 

121200, ¶ 11. Dismissal is proper when “it is clearly apparent from the pleadings that no set of 

facts can be proven that would entitle the plaintiff to recover.” Id. We accept as true all wellpleaded facts and reasonable inferences that may arise from those facts. Kanerva v. Weems, 2014 

IL 115811, ¶ 33. Our review of an order granting or denying a motion to dismiss is de novo. 

Cochran, 2017 IL 121200, ¶ 11. 

¶ 16 A. The Freedom of Information Act 

¶ 17 Underlying FOIA is the policy that access to public records “promotes the transparency 

and accountability of public bodies” by allowing “the people to fulfill their duties of discussing 

public issues fully and freely, making informed political judgments and monitoring 

government.” 5 ILCS 140/1 (West 2016). Unless otherwise stated, “[a]ll records in the custody 

or possession of a public body are presumed to be open to inspection or copying.” Id. § 1.2. 

¶ 18 In enacting FOIA, however, the legislature also made clear that it did not intend for 

compliance with records requests “to unduly burden public resources, or to disrupt the dulyundertaken work of any public body.” Id. § 1. To this end, section 3(g) of FOIA, relied on by the 

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Board in this case, excuses public bodies from complying with categorical requests where the 

burden of doing so would outweigh the public’s interest in the requested information. Section 

3(g) provides: 

“Requests calling for all records falling within a category shall be complied with unless 

compliance with the request would be unduly burdensome for the complying public body 

and there is no way to narrow the request and the burden on the public body outweighs 

the public interest in the information. Before invoking this exemption, the public body 

shall extend to the person making the request an opportunity to confer with it in an 

attempt to reduce the request to manageable proportions. If any public body responds to a 

categorical request by stating that compliance would unduly burden its operation and the 

conditions described above are met, it shall do so in writing, specifying the reasons why 

it would be unduly burdensome and the extent to which compliance will so burden the 

operations of the public body. Such a response shall be treated as a denial of the request 

for information.” Id. § 3(g). 

¶ 19 Section 7 of FOIA separately exempts certain types of records or information from 

disclosure. Id. § 7. For example, personal information is exempt from disclosure if it would 

“constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Id. § 7(1)(c). And investigatory 

records are exempt whenever their disclosure would identify an informant, “disclose unique or 

specialized investigative techniques,” or otherwise “interfere with an active criminal 

investigation.” Id. § 7(d)(iv), (v). 

¶ 20 In keeping with the legislature’s intent that FOIA be liberally construed in favor of 

disclosure, exemptions are narrowly applied. Southern Illinoisan v. Illinois Department of Public 

Health, 218 Ill. 2d 390, 416 (2006). The burden is always on the public body “to establish that its 

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refusal to permit public inspection or copying is in accordance with the provisions of the FOIA 

and that the records fall within the exemption it has claimed.” Id. at 418 (citing 5 ILCS 140/11(f) 

(West 1998)). Under section 1.2 of FOIA, “[a]ny public body that asserts that a record is exempt 

from disclosure has the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that it is exempt.” 5 

ILCS 140/1.2 (West 2016); see also id. § 11(f) (repeating this requirement); id. § 9(a) (providing 

that a public body’s denial of a public records request must include “a detailed factual basis for 

the application of any exemption claimed”); id. § 9(b) (separately providing that denials based on 

section 7 exemptions “shall specify the exemption claimed to authorize the denial and the 

specific reasons for the denial, including a detailed factual basis and a citation to supporting legal 

authority”). 

¶ 21 Section 11(a) of FOIA provides that a requesting party denied access to a public record 

may sue the public body that denied its request “for injunctive or declaratory relief.” Id. § 11(a). 

And pursuant to section 11(j), “[i]f the court determines that a public body willfully and 

intentionally failed to comply with [FOIA], or otherwise acted in bad faith, the court shall also 

impose upon the public body a civil penalty of not less than $2,500 nor more than $5,000 for 

each occurrence.” Id. § 11(j). 

¶ 22 B. Time Extensions 

¶ 23 Based on the speed with which it received the Board’s initial response to each of those 

records, Shriver contends that the Board has a practice of automatically taking a five-day 

extension of time to respond to all requests that it receives, without first evaluating those requests 

to determine if an extension is warranted. Shriver argues that, by engaging in this practice, the 

Board took improper, bad-faith extensions, thus forfeiting its ability to assert undue burden as a 

reason for withholding the requested records. In response, the Board argues that the extensions 

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were proper. It also argues that, by failing to raise it in its opening brief, Shriver has forfeited any 

argument that a finding of willful and intentional violations of FOIA could be based on the 

automatic taking of five-day extensions. 

¶ 24 Section 3(d) of FOIA provides that a public body must comply with or deny a request for 

public records in writing within five business days of receiving it. Id. § 3(d). Section 3(e), 

however, provides that this time period “may be extended by the public body for not more than 5 

business days from the original due date,” for any of seven enumerated reasons. Id. § 3(e). 

¶ 25 We conclude that the extensions taken by the Board in this case were proper. The plain 

language of FOIA gives a public body in receipt of a records request the unilateral ability to 

extend its own response deadline by five days. Id. Only extensions of more than five days require 

the written agreement of the requesting party. Id. The statute requires the public body to “notify 

the person making the request of the reasons for the extension and the date by which the 

response will be forthcoming.” Id. § 3(f). Nowhere does Shriver allege that the Board failed to 

comply with this requirement. Because, for the reasons articulated below, we agree with the 

Board that it would have been unduly burdensome for it to have complied with Shriver’s 

requests, there can be no real dispute that the extensions taken by the Board were proper under 

section 3(e)(vi) of FOIA, which provides that a five-day extension is proper when a public body 

cannot produce the requested records within five days “without unduly burdening or interfering 

with the operations of the public body.” Id. § 3(e)(vi). Other enumerated justifications might also 

be applicable. 

¶ 26 Contrary to Shriver’s assertions, the Board’s actions did not run afoul of section 3(d) of 

FOIA, which provides both that a “[f]ailure to comply with a written request, extend the time for 

response, or deny a request within 5 business days after its receipt shall be considered a denial of 

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the request” and “[a] public body that fails to respond to a request received may not treat the 

request as unduly burdensome under subsection (g).” Id. § 3(d). In each instance, the Board took 

a permissible extension of time within five business days of receiving Shriver’s request and 

responded to the request in detail within the properly extended period of time within which to do 

so. The circuit court correctly dismissed with prejudice Shriver’s three claims for willful and 

intentional failure to comply with FOIA. 

¶ 27 C. Undue Burden 

¶ 28 We next consider the circuit court’s denial of Shriver’s request for injunctive relief in the 

form of an order requiring the Board to produce the requested records. The Board denied each of 

Shriver’s requests on the basis that compliance would be unduly burdensome. For compliance 

with a FOIA request to be considered unduly burdensome, three things must be shown: (1) the 

request must be a categorical one, seeking “all records falling within a category”; (2) there must 

be no way to narrow the request; and (3) the burden on the public body must outweigh public 

interest in the requested information. Id. § 3(g). To properly invoke section 3(g), a public body 

must give the requesting party “an opportunity to confer with it in an attempt to reduce the 

request to manageable proportions” and explain in writing why compliance with the request 

would be unduly burdensome. Id. The parties do not dispute that Shriver’s records requests were 

categorical. And the parties’ pre-suit communications indicate that, although invited to do so, 

Shriver made no further attempts to narrow or clarify its requests following the Board’s third 

denial. We focus then—as the parties have in their briefs—on the third element: whether the 

burden of compliance outweighed public interest in the records sought. 

¶ 29 Shriver argues that it was the Board’s burden to prove this element by clear and 

convincing evidence. The Board contends, however, that its written responses to Shriver’s 

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requests were sufficient to invoke section 3(g). The Board’s position, which the circuit court 

adopted, is that section 3(g) is not a true exemption and the requirement, stated in both section 

1.2 and section 11(f) of FOIA, that “[a]ny public body that asserts that a record is exempt from 

disclosure has the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that it is exempt” 

(emphasis added) (id. § 1.2; see also id. § 11(f)) applies only when a public body asserts one of 

the record-specific exemptions found in section 7 of FOIA (5 ILCS 140/7 (West 2016)). 

¶ 30 In support of this proposition, the Board relies on Shehadeh v. Madigan, 2013 IL App 

(4th) 120742. The plaintiff in that case submitted a FOIA request to the Illinois Attorney General 

seeking “copies of any publications, opinions, reports or other records that would or could be 

used for guidance by [the Attorney General’s] office or any other public body in complying with 

Illinois’ FOIA laws.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. ¶ 1. The Attorney General 

responded in writing, stating that it would be unduly burdensome to comply with the request 

because a preliminary search had retrieved over 9000 potentially responsive files that her staff 

would have to review and redact by hand. Id. ¶ 5. The Attorney General’s office invited the 

plaintiff to narrow his request by identifying specific FOIA exemptions or issues concerning 

which he hoped to obtain documents, but the plaintiff declined to so, electing instead to file a 

lawsuit. Id. The Attorney General moved for and was granted summary judgment on the basis 

that her office had properly asserted undue burden under section 3(g). Id. ¶¶ 10-11, 13. 

¶ 31 On appeal, the plaintiff in Shehadeh argued the Attorney General’s office had failed to 

prove that it had either conducted an adequate search or that it would indeed be unduly 

burdensome to comply with plaintiff’s request. Id. ¶¶ 27, 34. The appellate court disagreed, 

finding that the plaintiff’s request was “patently broad on its face” and “[a]ccordingly, the 

Attorney General’s response, explaining the burden that complying with plaintiff’s request 

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would cause, was sufficient to claim a section 3(g) exemption in [that] case.” Id. ¶ 28. The court 

rejected the notion that a public body is required—as it would be if asserting a section 7 

exemption—either to demonstrate the adequacy of its search or provide affidavits from its staff 

members in support of a claim of undue burden where the public body has already complied with 

section 3(g)’s requirement that it specify its reasons for noncompliance in writing. Id. ¶¶ 30, 34. 

¶ 32 The Board’s reliance on Shehadeh for the proposition that section 3(g) is not a FOIA 

exemption subject to proof by clear and convincing evidence is misplaced. First, the Shehadeh 

court itself referred to section 3(g) as an exemption throughout its decision. Id. ¶¶ 19, 25, 28, 30, 

32, 34. Indeed, the term is used in the statute. See 5 ILCS 140/3(g) (West 2016) (“Before 

invoking this exemption, the public body shall ***.” (Emphasis added.)). Nor are the words 

“clear and convincing” found anywhere in the Shehadeh decision. 

¶ 33 What is clear from Shehadeh is that section 7 exemptions are, by their very nature, 

different from the undue burden exemption in section 3(g). A plaintiff wishing to test the 

applicability of a section 7 exemption has little to go on besides the public body’s bare assertion 

that all responsive records were located and fall within an exempt category. It makes sense that 

in such cases courts have required public bodies to demonstrate, through affidavits or an 

in camera review, that their searches were adequate and that the documents they located fall 

within the claimed category of statutorily exempt documents. See, e.g., Illinois Education Ass’n 

v. Illinois State Board of Education, 204 Ill. 2d 456, 470-71 (2003). 

¶ 34 A plaintiff seeking to test a claim of undue burden under section 3(g) will—if the public 

body has engaged in the good-faith dialogue required by that section—have more information at 

its disposal. When documentation of that exchange is attached to the plaintiff’s complaint, and 

when the public body’s justifications are detailed and not conclusory, vague, or sweeping (cf. 

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Day v. City of Chicago, 388 Ill. App. 3d 70, 74 (2009) (applying these same criteria to determine 

when an affidavit in support of a section 7 exemption can be relied on in lieu of an in camera 

review)), it may be possible for the circuit court to determine on the pleadings whether a public 

body has made a clear and convincing showing of undue burden. 

¶ 35 Such is the case here. The Board provided a detailed written response to each of Shriver’s 

records requests. In response to the first request, it explained that the complaints Shriver sought 

were neither centrally located nor kept electronically and invited Shriver to narrow its request, 

either by specifying a shorter time frame or by providing more information about the complaints 

(i.e., who they were submitted by or to, what form they took, and whether they were submitted in 

connection with some sort of formal proceeding). Shriver’s second request was narrower; it 

sought one year of misconduct reports instead of four and specified a particular database or 

software—the “VERIFY system”—in which the complaints might be found. The Board again 

responded in writing, providing details about fields used in the VERIFY system and the results 

of a preliminary search of the system, which identified hundreds of potentially responsive files. 

The Board explained that the only way to isolate employee misconduct reports involving inschool officers would be to manually review and redact those 600 employee misconduct reports, 

work it explained would take hundreds of hours. Shriver’s final request was actually broader 

than its second, seeking all employee complaints in the VERIFY system, not just those involving 

police officers. 

¶ 36 This written exchange, appended to the complaint, provided the circuit court with an 

adequate understanding of the burden involved in complying with Shriver’s requests. An 

in camera review would not have assisted the court further, as application of section 3(g) does 

not turn on the nature of the withheld documents, but on the nature of the search necessary to 

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identify and prepare them for public disclosure. And we see no reason to require the Board to 

submit an affidavit that would, in all likelihood, contain the same information provided in its 

written responses. By insisting that more is required here, Shriver is essentially asking us to hold 

that an evidentiary hearing is required whenever a public body asserts undue burden under 

section 3(g). We do not believe this was the legislature’s intent. 

¶ 37 We also decline to take judicial notice of a website—provided by Shriver for the first 

time in its appellate reply brief—describing optical character recognition software that it 

contends the Board could have used to convert information in the VERIFY system into 

searchable text. Nothing in Shriver’s complaint or the parties’ pre-suit communications indicates 

that Shriver ever raised this possibility with the Board before filing suit, and nothing in the 

record indicates that Shriver ever asked the circuit court to take judicial notice of this purported 

fact. By raising the argument for the first time in its reply brief, Shriver has also deprived the 

Board of an opportunity to respond to it. Under these circumstances, judicial notice would be 

improper. See Mabry v. Boler, 2012 IL App (1st) 111464, ¶ 15 (“Generally, arguments not raised 

before the circuit court are forfeited and cannot be raised for the first time on appeal.); Ill. S. Ct. 

R. 341(h)(7) (eff. Nov. 1, 2017) (“Points not argued are waived and shall not be raised in the 

reply brief, in oral argument, or on petition for rehearing.”). 

¶ 38 In sum, we hold that a public body asserting a section 3(g) exemption must make a clear 

and convincing showing that the burden of compliance outweighs public interest in the 

disclosure of the requested records. This need not always—or even in most cases—necessitate an 

evidentiary hearing or the filing of detailed affidavits. Where, as here, the pre-suit 

communications attached to the complaint demonstrate that the public body has complied in 

good faith with section 3(g) by providing a written explanation for its noncompliance and has 

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given the requesting party an opportunity to test the scope of that explanation by clarifying or 

narrowing its request, the circuit court may not need any additional information to weigh the 

burden of compliance against the public’s interest in disclosure. What constitutes a clear and 

convincing showing of undue burden will likely vary from case to case, depending on the 

broadness of the request, the level of detail provided in the public body’s response, and the 

nature of the parties’ exchange. 

¶ 39 While we think the record in this case provides a clear and convincing showing of the 

burden compliance would place on the Board, it remains for us to decide whether the circuit 

court erred in concluding that that burden outweighed the public’s interest in the records that 

Shriver sought. We take issue neither with Shriver’s assertion, supported by numerous secondary 

sources, that there is “an alarming national trend” whereby “primarily children of color are 

funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile justice system,” nor with its belief that 

“[p]olice officers patrolling school hallways often have little or no training in working with 

youth.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) These are certainly matters of great public concern. 

But Shriver’s repeated insistence that “student arrest data” is of critical public interest is 

somewhat misleading. Shriver has not requested student arrest data. Indeed, it acknowledges in 

its brief that the U.S. Department of Justice already requires school boards to compile and make 

school arrest data available to the public. Instead, Shriver has requested a broad swath of the 

Board’s employment records. 

¶ 40 We have held that when a request is “overly broad and requires the public body to locate, 

review, redact and arrange for inspection a vast quantity of material that is largely unnecessary to 

the [requestor’s] purpose,” this constitutes undue burden. National Ass’n of Criminal Defense 

Lawyers v. Chicago Police Department, 399 Ill. App. 3d 1, 17 (2010). Although we agree with 

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Shriver that it is important for the public to monitor the interactions police officers have with 

CPS students, we also agree with the Board that the burden associated with reviewing and 

redacting all of its employee misconduct reports, for an entire year, outweighs the possibility that 

such a broad search would yield material that is necessary to Shriver’s stated purpose. Unlike in 

National Ass’n of Criminal Defense Lawyers, where it was clear that each of the requested case 

files involving eyewitness identifications would be relevant to the legislatively mandated study 

on eyewitness identification procedures that the requesting party was charged with carrying out, 

here, it is uncertain what percentage, if any, of the employee misconduct reports Shriver 

requested might have anything to do with the school-to-prison pipeline. Id. at 12. 

¶ 41 If Shriver had reason to suspect misconduct within a specific school or by a specific 

officer and had tailored its request accordingly, or if it had focused its requests on the schools 

with the highest student arrest rates, the burden would be lower and the public interest higher. As 

it stands, although we appreciate Shriver’s concerns, what it seeks is an opportunity to engage in 

a fishing expedition through the Board’s files, in the hopes of finding that some officer or guard, 

in some school, engaged in some sort of misconduct that may have contributed to a school-toprison pipeline. Because the attachments to Shriver’s complaint sufficiently demonstrate that the 

burden of compliance with such a request outweighs the public’s interest in the records sought, 

dismissal pursuant section 2-615 of the Code was proper. 

¶ 42 IV. CONCLUSION 

¶ 43 For the above reasons, we affirm the circuit court’s dismissal with prejudice of Shriver’s 

complaint for willful violation of FOIA and an order compelling the Board to produce the 

requested records. 

¶ 44 Affirmed. 

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