Q: I am a journalist whose First and Fourth Amendment Rights were violated by police. The incident occurred while I was documenting but not speaking or interacting with anyone on the public sidewalk. The police department report has my location and description, and stated no crime suspected, just my presence and that I am photographing the police. A police officer walked behind me and without cause or warning reached around and stuck his hand inside

Q: I am a Ph.D. student at a state university. For the past several months I have been a part of a political movement demanding a cost of living adjustment for graduate students. As part of this student action, there have been pickets often consisting of several hundred people daily. I have been fired as a result of my participation in this strike. I am requesting assistance regarding a recent development that may infringe on

Q:  I am on the board of a nonprofit preschool in a county-owned building and we have just learned that our lease expired nearly two decades ago. This is an old building, but we have been declared safe by the company we hired to do our mold report. The county is refusing to show us their mold report, claiming attorney-client privilege. The county is trying to get us to vacate the building to do remediation

Q: We operate a news publication. We have obtained discovery and depositions from the 1990s for a California civil case. There were no court orders sealing the discovery or depositions. Can we use that material for a story? A: Although we cannot provide you with specific legal advice, generally speaking, the publication of truthful information regarding a matter of public concern is rarely legally actionable. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that state officials may not constitutionally punish publication of truthful