In City of Gilroy v. Superior Court, the Supreme Court yesterday held the California Public Records Act allows for declaratory relief “in at least some circumstances in which all existing responsive, nonexempt records have been disclosed in response to a records request,” but it also said the Act “does not ‘impose a duty upon public agencies to preserve all documents responsive to a public records request that have been withheld as exempt’ for a period of three years, commencing from when a public agency invokes a statutory exemption as a reason to withhold the records.”
At issue in the case was a request for disclosure of some videos, including police body-cam videos, of officers clearing homeless encampments.
The court’s opinion by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero concluded that, “at a minimum, declaratory relief is appropriate in situations in which an agency is reasonably likely to repeat past conduct that allegedly violates the CPRA in response to future records requests.” Such relief is appropriate, the court said, to “guide the parties’ future conduct with respect to the parties’ rights and responsibilities under the CPRA.”
The court found no document preservation requirement based on the Act’s text, its legislative history, and because of “the presence of retention periods in other statutes applicable to records commonly sought through CPRA litigation, and the penalties for spoliation in the litigation context.”
All seven justices sign the court’s opinion, but Justice Joshua Groban, joined by Justices Carol Corrigan and Leondra Kruger, filed a concurrence “to elaborate on the circumstances that, in my view, would — and would not — warrant declaratory relief under the CPRA.” He wrote, “the CPRA does not authorize declaratory relief for the sole purpose of declaring that an agency’s past conduct violated the CPRA where there is no evidence of a pattern or practice of violations or where the agency does not dispute its legal obligations under the CPRA.” Allowing broader use of a declaratory action, Justice Groban said, “could improperly incentivize members of the public to seek declaratory relief not for the purpose of addressing an actual harm, but merely to obtain attorney’s fees” and “could also discourage agencies from reconsidering their initial legal positions regarding the public’s right to the requested records, because agencies might remain liable for attorney’s fees even if they voluntarily produce all documents before litigation.”
The court affirmed in part the Sixth District Court of Appeal’s published opinion. It agreed about the lack of a record retention requirement, but found too narrow the Sixth District’s view about the availability of declaratory relief.
