Aaron Field joined FAC as its first Senior Staff Attorney in May 2025. As Senior Staff Attorney, Field oversees a newly expanded legal portfolio for FAC, with a focus on strategic litigation to hold California public agencies accountable under free speech and open government laws.
Before joining FAC, Field was a Partner at Cannata, O’Toole, & Olson LLP, where he represented journalists, media organizations, whistleblowers, and others in public records, First Amendment, newsgathering, libel, defamation, and other civil litigation matters. For example, in The Sacramento Bee and Los Angeles Times v. Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, Field brought and won one of the first Public Records Act lawsuits by news media organizations to enforce SB 1421, California’s landmark police transparency law. In Rodrique v. County of Sacramento, Field represented The Sacramento Bee in a protective order challenge that allowed a plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit to disclose excessive force investigation reports by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office to the newspaper. And, in Resolute Forest Products v. Greenpeace International, et al., Field successfully defended Greenpeace Fund against defamation, civil RICO, and related claims by an international logging company.
Field is no stranger to FAC. In law school, he interned with FAC and assisted in briefing City of San Jose v. Superior Court, which established that records on public officials’ personal accounts and devices are not exempt from the Public Records Act. Field went on to represent FAC in private practice, including in two notable Public Records Act cases, City of Gilroy v. Superior Court and San José Spotlight and First Amendment Coalition v. City of San José. He was also part of the legal team that represented FAC — along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter (SPJ NorCal) — in moving to unseal search warrant materials in the case of journalist Bryan Carmody, whose apartment was raided by San Francisco Police Department officers in 2019.
Field is a graduate of the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, where he participated in moot court and won first place in the national Jerome Prince Memorial Evidence Competition at Brooklyn Law School. He was selected to the Northern California Super Lawyers “Rising Stars” list each year from 2020-2025, and he received SPJ NorCal’s John Gothberg Meritorious Service to SPJ Award in 2019. He is a member and former Co-Chair of SPJ NorCal’s Freedom of Information Committee and a member of the California bar.