Search Results

Showing 51 - 60 of 1785 results

Asked and Answered

CPRA

Can my former employer disclose my personnel records under the CPRA?

I resigned from my job at a government entity. I submitted a CPRA request to my former workplace, seeking records related to disciplinary actions taken against me. My former workplace responded, providing only some records and stating the remaining records are exempt under Government Code Sections 7922.000, 7927.700, and 7927.705. It did not provide […]

May 15, 2025
Pages

Why Support FAC?

[…] available and enforced for everyone, irrespective of wealth, politics or access to power. Every day, FAC’s team of First Amendment experts fight for these protections and for government transparency on multiple fronts, bringing our decades of experience to bear by using our model of integrated advocacy—litigation, public education, and policy advocacy—to attack violations of […]

July 20, 2024
Latest News

Blog

When mayors evade disclosure rules by using personal email accounts for city business, it is democracy that suffers. We’ll know soon if the courts, like the public, have lost patience.

For years government officials in California have known that their emails about official business are subject to disclosure as public records. Although mayors, city managers, supervisors and superintendents may not like this, the applicability of the public records law to email messages is settled. You will not be shocked to learn, however, that many […]
- Government Transparency and Accountability
February 6, 2014
Latest News

Blog

Make no mistake, China’s censorship of the internet is a crime against liberty on a mass scale. Still, American firms can’t just steer clear of the world’s biggest market. What to do?

[…] double-digit rates, China’s internet is a business opportunity so grand and irresistible that it can blind normally circumspect people to the moral compromises that cooperation with Chinese government authorities inevitably entails. I experienced this first-hand when, about a year ago, I made inquiries at the China offices of a number of American law firms […]
- Government Transparency and Accountability
June 3, 2009
Latest News

Blog

If China unplugs Google, it will be the first time China’s people will know what they are not being allowed to see. This should give the censors pause.

BY PETER SCHEER--Google's high-stakes confrontation with China's government has entered a new, and uncertain, phase. Making good on its threat to cease censorship of search results on its China-based site, Google.cn, Google has begun redirecting users in China to its uncensored Chinese-language site based in Hong Kong, google.com.hk. China's censors now face a difficult […]
- Government Transparency and Accountability
March 24, 2010
Latest News

Blog

Hillary’s email problem: A crucial lesson for government officials everywhere

[…] the country literally thousands of state and local political officials, from governors to local school superintendents, use their personal email accounts for sending and receiving messages about government business. Hardly surprising. All public officials support government transparency in the abstract, but when it comes to their own communications, most opt for secrecy. They have […]
- Government Transparency and Accountability
March 17, 2015
Latest News

Cases

Amici Briefs Digest – March 2018

[…] the issue of whether the mere existence of probable cause to arrest an individual defeats that individual’s ability to bring a First Amendment retaliation lawsuit against the government--i.e., a lawsuit alleging that the government retaliated against the individual for exercising free-expression rights protected under the First Amendment. FAC joined an amicus by the National […]
- Free Expression
- Press Freedom
March 7, 2018
Latest News

Blog

A stunning end to the media’s 20-year losing streak in high court access cases.

Watershed CA Supreme Court decision is major win for government transparency By Peter Scheer America's highest courts are justly criticized for avoiding hard issues. The judicial fetish for deciding cases on the narrowest possible grounds yields opinions so limited and unambitious in scope that they often raise more questions, and generate more legal disputes, […]
- Government Transparency and Accountability
June 3, 2009
Asked and Answered

Brown Act

Inaccurate agenda information at County Board meeting

[…] County is violating the Brown Act, he or she may bring essentially three types of legal suits to enforce the Brown Act: (1) a suit over a government entity’s alleged violation of the Act based on the that entity’s past violation of the Brown Act; (2) a suit to contest or enjoin ongoing or […]

April 15, 2016
Asked and Answered

CPRA

When government outsources program are documents public?

[…] question you raise is a difficult one, and my colleagues and I are aware of only spotty authority that addresses the question of public records which the government has effectively outsourced. However, neither case really addresses the particular situation you outline below. In San Gabriel Tribune v. Superior Court, 143 Cal. App. 3d 762 […]

October 10, 2011