Question
The city has just reached a settlement agreement with several police officers who had filed claims–and then a lawsuit–alleging discrimination on the part of the police chief. There were also workers compensation claims tied to this lawsuit. The city just announced that as part of the agreement, the officers have withdrawn their civil suit. Also, the city will be resolving all outstanding workers compensation claims. I want to request the settlement agreement to find out what all the terms of the agreement are. Is there any anything I should know about getting access to settlement agreements?
Answer
Generally speaking, settlement agreements where one of the parties is a public agency are not exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act. See Register Division of Freedom Newspapers v. County of Orange, 158 Cal. App. 3d 893, 909 (1984); Copley Press, Inc. v. Superior Court, 63 Cal. App. 4th 367, 376 (1998).
There are a number of statutory provisions in California’s Penal Code that provide for confidentiality of various records related to peace officers. It is possible (but perhaps unlikely) that the agreement could include information from the officers’ personnel records that might be exempt under Penal Code Section 832.7 or other information that might legitimately be considered exempt. See San Diego Police Officers Assn. v. City of San Diego Civil Service Com., 104 Cal. App. 4th 275, 283, 287 (2002).
Even if the agreement contained legitimately exempt information (and, again, this may be unlikely, as it should generally be possible to draft a settlement agreement without including material so sensitive that it qualifies for an exemption from disclosure under the PRA), please note that the city should still disclose the rest of the agreement with the exempt material redacted. Govt. Code 6253(a) (“Any reasonably segregable portion of a record shall be available for inspection by any person requesting the record after deletion of the portions that are exempted by law.”).
Whether there are other records you might want to request in addition to the settlement agreement probably depends on the facts of the particular case. Assuming you are able to obtain the agreement, it may point you to other records that you may want to ask about.
Asked & Answered posts should not be relied on as legal advice, and FAC makes no guarantees about their completeness or accuracy. All posts carry a date of publication that readers should take note of in assessing their usefulness, given that laws and interpretations of them may change over time. Posts predating Jan. 1, 2023, that discuss the California Public Records Act may contain statute numbers no longer in use. Please see this page for a table showing how the California Public Records Act has been renumbered.