CHICAGO — The Chicago Tribune has filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago over records on cases involving misconduct allegations that officials have refused to release despite two separate attorney general opinions in the newspaper’s favor.
The lawsuit asks a Cook County judge to uphold Freedom of Information Act requests made over the last two years by reporters Gregory Pratt and Jeremy Gorner.
The lawsuit alleges one of the city’s motives in blocking a September 2020 records request from Pratt was to save the workers accused of mistreating other employees throughout Chicago government from “embarrassment.”
The city “thumbed its nose” at the Tribune and the attorney general’s office over records that Gorner sought in May 2021 about misconduct allegations involving ranking members of the Chicago Fire Department, the lawsuit says.
“These records are clearly public,” Tribune Executive Editor Mitch Pugh said. “Two attorney general opinions make that abundantly clear, yet the city has refused to follow the law.
“It’s unfortunate that the city has forced us to take this action, but the Tribune will always prioritize the public’s right to know over the comfort of elected officials.”
Chicago law department spokeswoman Kristen Cabanban said in an emailed statement that “the City will review the filed complaint and will have no further comment as the matter is now in litigation.”
Pratt’s request was for records that included discrimination or harassment charges filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Illinois Department of Human Rights and served on the city.
In both cases, the Tribune said it asked the city for responses that redacted the names of people complaining of mistreatment in order to protect their privacy.
The Tribune took both of the disputes to the attorney general’s office.
The AG in a nonbinding opinion said the city “improperly denied” Pratt’s request. The office said records from the EEOC and the state Human Rights Department can be disclosed because those two agencies’ privacy protections don’t apply to the city once it receives copies of the discrimination or harassment charges.
The AG’s office said the city should turn over the records, but it allowed for redactions of names, personal contact information and details that might help identify the alleged victims.
According to the Tribune’s lawsuit, the city “stunningly” defied the attorney general’s opinion, citing the need to maintain the privacy of those who alleged mistreatment — a point the Tribune charged was “ignoring the fact that the AG office had permitted the city to redact their names and identifying details.”
Chicago officials further argued it sought to protect the alleged victims from retaliation — a position the paper contended was “ignoring the fact that the only entity that could conceivably retaliate against any complainants was the city itself,” the lawsuit said.
Calling the city’s reasoning “inconsistent and insupportable,” the Tribune charged “one of the city’s true motives in refusing to produce documents responsive to the September FOIA is to protect from embarrassment those city employees who have been accused of discrimination or harassment and other city employees who are tasked with investigating, responding and remedying such claims.”
Gorner’s request to Chicago’s Department of Human Resources was for “records sufficient to show any and all investigative files in their entirety pertaining to sexual misconduct and/or bullying and/or workplace harassment and/or intimidation and/or sexual harassment allegations” filed by a specific Chicago Fire Department employee.
The city, after asking for more time to respond, denied the request entirely. When the Tribune appealed the matter, the attorney general’s office said not all of the records were exempt but that the city could redact information that identified the alleged victim, witnesses and “particularly graphic, sexually explicit portions.”
But the AG also said the city “improperly withheld factual statements, such as records of witness interviews.”
The Tribune is seeking to have the city pay its legal fees and other costs of bringing the lawsuit, an option in the law aimed at urging public bodies to follow open government laws.
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