Judge Orders In Camera Inspection In Response to FOIL Request

Matter of Felicio v.  Connetquot Central School District, ____Misc. 3d____(Suffolk Co. May 3, 2017),  is an interesting case concerning the Freedom of Information Law. The President of the teacher's union sought email correspondence between certain District administrators. The Board complied by supplying a redacted copies of the emails. The employer claimed that the redaction was necessary to protect the privacy interests of certain employees and to protect inter-agency documents which were not final decisions. FOIL, of course, is not absolute, and these are two of the exceptions to mandatory disclosure of documents.

The court held that it could not make a determination as to whether the documents were exempt from disclosure and ordered an in camera inspection of the documents so that the court could review the entire set of documents. As the court explained:

It is undisputed that respondent's assertion of exemptions requires a, specific and particularized showing to be successful. As noted above, this Court reviewed the redacted documents produced by respondent. However, the redactions and the subject matter which respondent has sought to protect loom large in this Court's analysis. Contrary to respondent's contention against in camera review of FOIL disclosure, our appellate courts have repeatedly cautioned that the proper procedure for respondent to sustain its burden of establishing concrete support of asserted exemptions in the abstract is to submit the records in question for in camera inspection by the court (see Matter of Gould v. 984 New York City Police Dept., 89 NY2d at 275, Matter of Xerox Corp. v. Town of Webster, 65 NY2d 131 , 133 [1985); Matter of M. Farbman & Sons v. New York City Healtlt & Hosps. Corp., 62 NY2d at 83;Miller v New York State Dept. of Tran.'ip., 58 AD3d 981, 983- 84, 871 NYS2d 489, 493 [3d Dept 20091; see also Thomas v New York City Dept. of Educ. , 103 AD3d 495, 499, 962 NYS2d 29, 33 [1st Dept 20131 [ matter should be remanded to the article 78 court for an in camera inspection of the documents to determine if redaction could strike an appropriate balance between personal privacy and public interests and which material could be properly disclosed]).