Asked & Answered

Q: I was told by our county authorities that the county cannot release specific ages, gender, co-morbidities or housing situation (group homes vs. apartments vs. single-family homes) for those individuals whose cause of death was attributed to COVID-19 on the grounds that releasing that data would violate health information privacy rules under HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). I do not want a list of information for each individual. I want to aggregate data

Q: We have a question about properly citing Court documents in one of our articles. We ran a story based on court documents and police reports. One of the defendants contacted us saying that we “defamed” him in our article by writing that he had been “convicted” of the crime. His argument is that he plead guilty and therefore was never “convicted.” My question is if we did make any mistake citing these documents, have

Q: Recently Facebook removed a comment I made on my account and warned me about “hate speech.” This is a real strongly-worded accusation, and “hate” definitely was not my intention. I think it is or should be illegal to call something “hate speech,” just because it is conservative and opinionated and Facebook’s policing of my account is unwarranted legally. Do I have a case? A: In general, First Amendment claims can only be brought when

Q: You would think that Community Action Agencies (nonprofit 501c3) would be subject to the Brown Act since they were created under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, are required to have one-third of their board made up of elected officials, and receive huge amounts of federal and state tax payer monies, etc. But a local newspaper here told us they are not. Can you settle this? A: A “legislative body” is subject to the Brown

Q: We have depositions from a 1994 California case with selected content we would like to use for a report. I understand that California depositions are not a matter of public record, though some other states make depositions a public record.The case was dismissed but never settled. Other than attaching the depositions or portions of the depositions to a court-filed document, is there any other legally accepted strategy to making selected portions of the depositions