North Cook News

North Cook News has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against Evanston Township High School (ETHS) over conflicting and inadequate responses it received from the school FOIA officer concerning its 2023-24 course catalogue. In April, the catalogue caused a firestorm among conservative news outlets for limiting entry into certain courses to “students who identify as Latinx,” and others “who identify as Black.”

The courses included Precalculus, English 2, Algebra 2 and AP Calculus.

The two-count FOIA complaint was filed September 29 in the Chancery Division of the Cook County Circuit Court, and it covers two requests by reporter Vince Espinoza: one on July 10 and a follow-up on August 7.  

The first request asked the school’s FOIA officer for “documents and correspondence discussing the benefits, justification, necessity, implementation and/or modification of a race-based qualification for classes or courses for academic years 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024.”

The school responded that the request was “unduly burdensome,” citing that there are “potentially thousands of emails” related to the request.

The follow-up from Espinoza narrowed and targeted the request to include communications among certain school officials, including Board of Education President Pat Savage-Williams.

The FOIA officer replied that “there are no responsive records to this request.”

North Cook News is a publication of Local Government Information Services, a news media organization.

Under Illinois FOIA law, all records of a public body must be made available to the public, unless specifically exempt under the law. That burden of proof regarding any exemption is on the public body, ETHS in this case.

ETHS has also been guarded with other news media outlets about its rationale for restricting entry to the courses.  

ETHS officials did not reply to a request for comment from the Cook County Record for a May 1 story on the controversy.

The school did tell Fox News Digital in early May that it did “not have (and never have had) a process that restricts students from taking AP classes based on race. No ETHS student is restricted from taking an AP class based on identity or is required to take any class based on identity."

The school attempted to soften the course entry restrictions in the face of the news reports and a complaint filed with the Chicago’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) by American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry.

“While open to all students, this optional section of the course is intended to support students who identify as Black,” the updated course description read.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board in a May 12 commentary reacted to ETHS’s updated language, writing that it could work as a “legal dodge, but the clear and depressing message is that Black and Hispanic students can’t achieve at the same level as white or Asian students.”

In related news, on June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina favoring minority students violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

ETHS has approximately 3,600 students, of whom 45% are classified as white, 25% Black, 20% Hispanic, 5% Asian, and 4% percent as two or more races, according to a Patch report.