On Jan. 12, 2021, the Mackinac Center filed a FOIA request for the names of all employees of the University of Michigan's Office of Institutional Equity in 2019 and 2020. This request was modified on Jan. 20 to include a request for these employees' salaries, including bonus and overtime pay. On Feb. 2, the university released the names and base salary of the employees but failed to provide the bonus and overtime pay requested.
CASE UPDATE: On July 12th, 2021 the Court of Claims ruled in favor of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, stating that the University of Michigan must provide the requested FOIA documents.
On Jan. 12, 2021, the Mackinac Center filed a FOIA request for the names of all employees of the University of Michigan's Office of Institutional Equity in 2019 and 2020. This request was modified on Jan. 20 to include a request for these employees' salaries, including bonus and overtime pay. On Feb. 2, the university released the names and base salary of the employees but failed to provide the bonus and overtime pay requested. It argued that the word "salary" has a fixed meaning in Michigan's FOIA statute and that anything outside of the base salary would be considered private information, and therefore, exempt.
The word "salary," however, does not appear in the relevant section of the FOIA statute. Instead, the law requires U-M to release all information, unless an exemption is provided in statue. While the university tried to apply the privacy exemption, how public money is being spent is established as not falling within the privacy exemption, and this includes all forms of compensation.
On July 12th, 2021 the Court of Claims ruled in favor of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, stating that the University of Michigan must provide the Legal Foundation with all salary records of employees of the University of Michigan Office of Institutional Equity for the 2019 and 2020 calendar years.
