District seeks to screen records before judge sees them; Cox objects as court prepares new ruling
WHITE PLAINS, NY (August 15, 2026) — The City School District of New Rochelle is asking a Westchester County Supreme Court judge for permission to keep portions of its Shrub Oak International School legal invoices redacted — even from the judge conducting a private review to determine whether the records were properly withheld.
The request came after Acting Supreme Court Justice Sheralyn Pulver directed the district to submit an unredacted version of the 380-page invoice production to the court for in camera review by Aug. 21.
The court-ordered review is part of an Article 78 proceeding brought by Talk of the Sound Publisher Robert Cox, representing himself pro se, challenging the district’s extensive redactions of legal bills related to Shrub Oak.
On Friday, attorney Michael Liptrot of Ingerman Smith, LLP, which represents the district and generated the invoices at issue, filed a letter asking Pulver to modify her directive.
Liptrot said the invoices contain entries related to matters other than Shrub Oak and asked that the district be permitted to redact those entries before providing the records to the judge.
The request prompted an unusual email exchange between the court and the parties.
David Rosenberg, Pulver’s principal law clerk, emailed Liptrot Friday afternoon seeking clarification of precisely what the district wanted the court to permit.
Rosenberg asked whether the district was requesting that information it considered “wholly unrelated to and unresponsive to” Cox’s FOIL request remain redacted and therefore remain “outside the scope of the Court’s in camera review.”
“Yes, that is correct,” Liptrot replied three minutes later.
Rosenberg said the court would issue a further Court Notice on Monday.
Cox Opposes District Request
Cox had separately prepared, then later filed, a letter with the court Friday opposing the district’s request and arguing that allowing the district to determine what Pulver may see would undermine the purpose of independent judicial review.
“The Court ordered independent review of the unredacted responsive records,” Cox wrote. “The District should provide the Court with the complete records so that the Court — not the party whose redaction decisions are being challenged — can determine what is responsive, what is exempt from disclosure, and what ultimately must be produced.”
Cox emphasized that he is not arguing that privileged attorney-client communications, student-identifying information or other information legitimately exempt under FOIL must ultimately be disclosed to him.
“The immediate question is much narrower,” Cox wrote: whether the district should be allowed to withhold portions of the records “from the Court itself before the Court conducts the in camera review it has ordered.”
Cox also asked that, if Pulver is inclined to grant the district’s request, he be permitted to submit a short memorandum of law before she modifies her directive.
What Is a Responsive Record?
There is also a potentially broader legal dispute behind the district’s request.
Cox contends that once an invoice is responsive to his FOIL request, the district cannot redact otherwise non-exempt portions of that record merely because an individual billing entry concerns something other than Shrub Oak.
In other words, Cox’s position is that “non-responsive” is not itself a FOIL exemption. Information legitimately protected under FOIL — such as privileged communications or certain personally identifying information — may be withheld where an applicable exemption permits it. But Cox disputes the district’s position that it may also remove otherwise non-exempt information from a responsive record simply because the district considers that particular information outside the subject of his request.
That issue was not fully briefed in Cox’s Friday letter. Instead, he expressly asked for an opportunity to submit a memorandum of law addressing “the treatment under FOIL of non-exempt information contained within responsive records” if Pulver is considering modifying her original directive.
Trying to Calculate the Cost of Shrub Oak
The purpose of the records fight is ultimately much simpler than the legal arguments surrounding it.
Cox is trying to determine how much the New Rochelle school district spent on legal services related to Shrub Oak.
He has already obtained records documenting other taxpayer costs associated with the district’s Shrub Oak placements, including tuition and transportation expenses. The legal bills are one of the remaining pieces needed to calculate the overall cost.
The district produced approximately 380 pages of Ingerman Smith invoices in January, but the extensive redactions make it impossible to calculate from the production how much the district spent on Shrub Oak-related legal work.
Cox’s goal is to arrive at a single documented figure for Shrub Oak legal expenses and ultimately combine that amount with tuition, transportation and other documented expenditures to determine the total cost to New Rochelle taxpayers.
Judge to Address Dispute
The latest disagreement follows more than a year of delays over the invoice request.
Pulver previously rejected the district’s effort to dismiss the legal-invoices portion of Cox’s Article 78 proceeding, finding that Cox had exhausted his administrative remedies and that unresolved disputes remained concerning the breadth of the redactions and completeness of the production.
The court subsequently directed the district to provide the invoices unredacted for private judicial review.
The district’s request to modify that directive now presents Pulver with a preliminary question before that review can proceed:
Does the district get to decide which portions of the invoices the judge gets to see?
The court said Friday that a further Court Notice will be issued Monday.
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This article was prepared with the assistance of AI tools under the direction and editing of Robert Cox.
Have information about this story? Email robertcox@talkofthesound (preferred) or contact via WhatsApp: +353 089 972 0669.