FAC conducts a program of strategic litigation by initiating “test case” lawsuits to resolve key legal issues in a way that maximizes chances for a favorable outcome, with potentially far-reaching effects.
The First Amendment Coalition (FAC) yesterday filed suit against the city of Bakersfield over the city council’s repeated practice of holding closed-door meetings to discuss topics that under California law must be heard in public. The lawsuit, jointly filed with Californians Aware (CalAware) in Kern County Superior Court, also demands
The City of Milpitas has released a trove of previously undisclosed documents alleging serious misconduct by a recently departed city manager— records the city refused to release until after the First Amendment Coalition sued Milpitas under the California Public Records Act. FAC first requested the records in May, and sued the
The city of Los Angeles has agreed it must retain city records for at least two years as part of a settlement agreement reached today with the First Amendment Coalition–a victory for transparency and government accountability in the nation’s second-largest city, and an assurance that the public will have the
The First Amendment Coalition today secured an important victory in its long-running fight with the U.S. Department of Justice to bring to public light legal memos analyzing the use of drone strikes to kill American citizens abroad. In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit held
The First Amendment Coalition today filed a “friend of court” brief in the United States Supreme Court, urging that court to review and reverse a decision by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals that punished a political candidate for speech that should have been protected under the First Amendment.
FAC recently filed a “friend of court” brief in a California Court of Appeal case addressing an issue of critical importance to the public’s ability to obtain records under the California Public Records Act: should a CPRA requester be required to get a court order—an injunction—to prevent the government from