In a case defended by our firm, the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor (PAC) in a nonbinding opinion found that a school district did not violate FOIA when it redacted administrators’ work-related cell phone numbers from records disclosed to a requester. The PAC determined that releasing the numbers would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy under section 7(1)(c) of FOIA because employees have a privacy interest in their work cell phone numbers, which are often carried outside of work hours and could expose them to harassment or excessive contact. Since the requester did not seek billing or usage records that might demonstrate how the phones were used or paid for, the PAC concluded that the public interest in disclosure was minimal and did not outweigh employees’ privacy rights.
The requester’s underlying FOIA request had simply sought a list of all District-funded cell phone numbers and the names of employees assigned to them. The district released the list but redacted the numbers, citing FOIA’s privacy exemptions. The requester argued that taxpayers have the right to know the numbers to “audit calls” and ensure lawful use of public resources. The PAC disagreed, emphasizing that the requester could obtain call or billing records through a more targeted request without revealing individual cell numbers. Relying on both prior PAC informal opinions and federal FOIA case law, the PAC reaffirmed that public employees retain a privacy interest in cell phone numbers even when those phones are District-issued, and this privacy interest outweighs the public interest in a mere directory of such cell phone numbers. On the other hand, the PAC had found in a different nonbinding opinion that work-issued cell phone numbers could not be redacted from a list of calls made by a chief administrator who was later indicted for a bribery/kickback scheme, because the public interest outweighed the privacy interest in that case. But where the requester was only seeking a mere directory of the cell phone numbers, the PAC upheld the district’s redactions.
This nonbinding opinion provides that public employees retain a reasonable expectation of privacy not just in their personal contact information, but even in a District-provided cell phone number they use for work. Such a cell phone number likely can be redacted under FOIA, but it may depend on a case-by-case analysis.
Source: 2025 PAC 89303 (nonbinding opinion)
