Where PAC Opinions Have Run Contrary to Existing Precedent
Not legal advice, and not a claim that any Opinion is wrong. Public Access Opinions are the Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor’s formal, numbered, binding determinations — they carry more weight than an ordinary determination letter, but they are still an administrative interpretation, not a court ruling. PAC does not create new law; it interprets FOIA and OMA against a requester’s specific facts, drawing on whatever statute and caselaw already existed at the time it wrote the opinion. The pairs below are cases where an Illinois appellate court had already decided a case on the same statutory exemptionbefore PAC issued its opinion — meaning that appellate holding was available authority PAC could have followed, and its own reading ran contrary to it anyway. This is a data point for further legal research, not a conclusion that any specific Opinion was wrongly decided — a full analysis requires confirming whether the Opinion actually addressed or distinguished the earlier case, which this pass did not check for every pair. If a dispute turns on one of these exemptions, read both documents in full and consult an attorney.
Methodology: cross-referencing 288 PAC opinions/letters against 73 appellate holdings sharing a statutory exemption citation, an AI model scored each pair for interpretive conflict, a second pass restricted to genuinely comparable fact patterns (privacy exemptions like 7(1)(b)/(c) are fact-specific balancing tests, so different outcomes on different facts under the same citation is normal, not a real conflict), then a manual date-order check confirmed the appellate case predated the PAC opinion in each pair below. Each finding’s case citation, PAC citation, exemption, and date order shown here were independently re-verified against the actual PAC opinion PDF and, where available, the actual case text before this page was published — see the note at the bottom.
Healey v. Teachers Retirement System (1990) vs. Public Access Opinion 18-002 (2017)
Case: 200 Ill. App. 3d 240 (4th Dist. 1990) · PAC: 2017 PAC 50286
The 2017 Opinion held that a water utility customer’s name, address, and account number were not “private information” exempt under 7(1)(b). Twenty-seven years earlier, Healey held that comparable personal information — names, addresses, and pension data — was exempt as private information under the same subsection.
View PAC Opinion PDFWard v. Weisbaum (2015) vs. Public Access Opinion 18-002 (2017)
Case: 2015 IL App (3d) 130852-U · PAC: 2017 PAC 50286
The same 2017 Opinion also concluded home addresses weren’t private under 7(1)(b). Two years earlier, Ward v. Weisbaum held that home addresses specifically are private information under 7(1)(b) — a direct example on the identical fact pattern (home addresses).
View PAC Opinion PDFCopley Press, Inc. v. City of Springfield (1994) vs. Public Access Opinion 12-007 (2011)
Case: 266 Ill. App. 3d 421 (4th Dist. 1994) · PAC: 2011 PAC 17813
The 2011 Opinion ordered disclosure of an investigative file, finding it not exempt under 7(1)(c). Seventeen years earlier, Copley Press held that internal-investigation records into a police chief were exempt under 7(1)(c) because privacy interests outweighed the public interest — both concern internal-investigation files specifically, making this one of the more directly comparable pairs here.
View PAC Opinion PDFMcGee v. Kelley (2017) vs. Public Access Opinion 19-008 (2019)
Case: 2017 IL App (3d) 160324 · PAC: 2019 PAC 58547
The 2019 Opinion found a violation for improper redaction of police records under 7(1)(c). Two years earlier, McGee v. Kelley affirmed denial of similar police-record disclosure under the same exemption. Medium confidence — worth a closer manual read of both before citing.
View PAC Opinion PDFMcGee v. Kelley (2017) vs. Public Access Opinion 20-009 (2020)
Case: 2017 IL App (3d) 160324 · PAC: 2020 PAC 65678
A separate 2020 Opinion found a violation for denying access to arrest reports under 7(1)(c); McGee (above) had already affirmed denial of similar police records under the same exemption three years prior — the second of two Opinions in this dataset where PAC’s 7(1)(c) reading on police records diverges from McGee specifically.
View PAC Opinion PDFJason E. Cohee v. Peoria County State’s Attorney’s Office (2022) vs. Public Access Opinion 26-002 (2025)
Case: 2022 (appellate) · PAC: 2025 PAC 90290
The 2025 Opinion found a violation for withholding a termination letter under 7(1)(c). Three years earlier, Cohee held that similar personnel documents were exempt under the same subsection as an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Medium confidence — confirm the specific record types line up before citing.
View PAC Opinion PDFBallew v. Chicago Police Department (2022) vs. Public Access Opinion 24-011 (2024)
Case: 2022 (appellate), docket 1-21-0715 · PAC: 2024 PAC 82164
The 2024 Opinion found a violation, concluding the law-enforcement exemption wasn’t properly invoked for an ongoing-investigation withholding. Two years earlier, Ballew affirmed the same exemption’s application on comparable facts. Note: the case actually cites the specific subsection 7(1)(d)(i), not the broader 7(1)(d) family generally.
View PAC Opinion PDFWatkins v. McCarthy (2012) vs. Public Access Opinion 18-018 (2018)
Case: 2012 (appellate), docket 1-10-0632 · PAC: 2018 PAC 55153
The 2018 Opinion held that final investigatory reports connected to police misconduct weren’t exempt under 7(1)(n). Six years earlier, Watkins v. McCarthy reversed and remanded a comparable dispute for in-camera inspection specifically because such records could potentially qualify for the exemption — a materially more cautious approach than the Opinion took.
View PAC Opinion PDFWhat this page is (and isn’t) good for
Good for: flagging these Opinions as ones where a requester or public body’s attorney should double-check the cited appellate authority directly before relying on the Opinion’s reasoning as settled. Not good for: asserting any of these Opinions is invalid, overruled, or that a public body or requester lost or would lose in court on this basis — that requires reading the actual Opinion and case in full.
Verification note
Every PAC Opinion citation, exemption, and PDF link above was opened and read directly before this page was built. On the case side: Ward v. Weisbaum and McGee v. Kelley were confirmed against their actual opinion text. Healey v. Teachers Retirement System and Copley Press v. City of Springfield were confirmed accurate as citations (the case name, year, court, and exemption in the underlying database are correct), but a separate bug was found in this site’s case-file linking for older (pre-1996) cases: the stored link for both currently resolves to a different, unrelated case’s text rather than the actual opinion. That’s a site infrastructure bug being tracked and fixed separately — it does not affect the accuracy of what’s written above, but it means the Court Cases browser may show the wrong full text for some older cases until that fix ships, so a citation link isn’t offered for those two here. Cohee, Ballew, and Watkins were confirmed to exist with matching citation/exemption/docket metadata but not re-read in full text as part of this pass.