First Amendment Kiss-Off** to Craigslist

A First Amendment kiss-off**  to Craigslist, which is resisting the demands of seventeen state attorneys general (but not including California’s Jerry Brown) that it shut down the website’s “adult services” section because, claim the AGs, it continues to promote prostitution and child-trafficking despite the site owners’ introduction of vetting (by lawyers, no less!) of sexually-oriented [...]

A 1st Amendment Kiss** to the LA Times for coverage of LA schools that empowers parents to hold bureaucrats and politicians accountable

A big First Amendment Kiss** to the Los Angeles Times and reporters Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith for their recent stories about LA public schools. The Times applied statistical analysis to seven years of student test scores in order to measure teachers’ effectiveness in math and English instruction. Using an outside consultant to [...]

If hard-won court victory against Prop 8 is tossed out because of “standing” defect, you can thank Jerry Brown

BY PETER SCHEER—If I were Ted Olson, the former US solicitor general who is leading the legal battle against Prop 8, I would be unhappy with Jerry Brown right now.
Olson’s hard-won victory before federal district court judge Vaughn Walker was meant to be the first stage of a legal strategy culminating in a US [...]

PRESS RELEASE: FAC Suit Against CalPERS Seeks Records on Controversial E Palo Alto Real Estate Investment

FAC—Monday July 19—The First Amendment Coalition (FAC) today announced that it has sued CalPERS, the retirement system for California government workers, over access to records about the agency’s ill-fated investment in an East Palo Alto residential real estate development that has gone bust–at a loss to CalPERS of all of its $100 million stake in [...]

Court orders release of county retirees’ pension payments in case filed by FAC and the Sacramento Bee

In an important legal victory, the Superior Court in Sacramento has ruled that the pension system for county government workers must make public retirees’ names, and their pension benefits, for all retirees receiving $100,000 or more per year. The decision is the result of a lawsuit filed jointly by the First Amendment Coalition and the [...]

Apple’s vetting of iPhone apps may be ham-handed, but it’s not illegal

BY PETER SCHEER—In the beginning there was the internet. It was raw, ungovernable and vast in its multiplicity of voices. Then came the Apple iPhone (and more recently, the iPad), offering a curated internet experience, using “apps” vetted by Apple for conformity to company standards for content and quality.
Millions of Apple i-device users [...]

FAC, media coalition win unsealing of search warrant affidavit in Gizmodo/iPhone matter

The media coalition organized by the First Amendment Coalition (FAC) has been successful in securing disclosure of the search warrant affidavit used to search an online journalist’s home for evidence concerning the Gizmodo/Apple/missing iPhone investigation.  Joining FAC in the unsealing motion were the Associated Press, Wired.com, Bloomberg News, CNET, the LA Times and the California [...]

AP, Bloomberg, CNET, Wired.com, LA Times, CNPA join FAC motion in lost-iPhone case

FAC–The First Amendment Coalition and major news media have requested the California Court presiding over the Gizmodo/missing iPhone matter to unseal judicial records relating to the warrant issued for the search of an online journalist’s home and the seizure of his computer, hard drives and other digital files.
The motion to unseal the warrant affidavit (which [...]

FAC files Brown Act suit alleging pattern & practice of “notice” violations by LA City Council

FAC–The First Amendment Coalition has filed suit against the Los Angeles City Council over the Council’s failure to tell the public, in advance, that it was about to consider and vote on layoffs of thousands of government workers. FAC’s suit, claiming a “pattern and practice” of violations of the Brown Act, requests declaratory and injunctive [...]

Digital strip-search: Case of lost iPhone prototype shows the danger of using search warrant to seize journalists’ information

BY PETER SCHEER—Search warrants have always been a blunt instrument for finding evidence of crime. Think of television cop shows from the 70s and 80s: A police search of an apartment for drugs was, de facto, a license to ransack all closets, cabinets and dressers. A warrant to seize a letter or other [...]

Court says NO to request by FAC and others for State Bar records needed for research on affirmative action

A California Superior Court judge has ruled that the State Bar Association, which regulates the legal profession, is not required to release data requested by the First Amendment Coalition and researchers’ studying the effect of law school affirmative action policies. The Court’s ruling in the controversial litigation will be appealed.
Judge Curtis E.A. Karnow [...]

FAC, joining info requests for Palin speech at UCS-Stanislaus, also requests speaking contract for Bill Clinton talk at UC Berkeley

FAC—The First Amendment Coalition has filed a request under the Public Records Act for the speaking contract covering Sarah Palin’s planned appearance at a fundraising event for CSU Stanislaus in June. FAC has also requested the speaking contract for Bill Clinton’s appearance and speech at UC Berkeley in February.
Arrangements for Palin’s speech have come under [...]

Supreme Court’s much-maligned First Amendment decision will, in fact, expand freedom of speech. Prediction: The Citizens United holding dooms IRS curbs on political advocacy by “dot-org” news media and other nonprofits.

BY PETER SCHEER—Forty-six years ago, the Supreme Court announced its decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, rewriting centuries of “common law” on libel and defamation, in order to boost constitutional protection for criticism of government policies and government officials. One of the most important free speech decisions in Supreme Court history, New York [...]

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 choice. They [...]

Leading gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown need to show voters, by their own actions, that they are committed to transparency in government. Promises won’t cut it.

BY PETER SCHEER—As California voters begin the process of selecting the next  Governor of the ungovernable Golden State, the leading candidates owe them a demonstration of their commitment to government transparency.
All politicians are supportive of open-government “in principle;”  the question is whether they are committed in practice. The best test for that is a candidate’s [...]

Reader-comments sections of news websites needn’t be cesspools. Editors should EDIT comments as they would letters-to-the-editor.

BY PETER SCHEER–Some people have no choice but to live in a cesspool. (Consider the young protagonist in Slumdog Millionaire, leaping into a pool of human waste in order to escape a locked latrine.) But news organizations are not among them.
The cesspool that many newspapers occupy is the “Comments” sections of their websites. This is [...]

Obama should back up Google with more than rhetoric: The US should challenge China’s “firewall” before the WTO.

PETER SCHEER—The US government is not powerless to influence China’s policies for censoring the internet. As Google has taken extraordinary steps–bordering on corporate civil disobedience–to challenge China’s stranglehold on the flow of information to and among its people, the Obama administration has acted as though its hands were tied. In fact, however, the administration does [...]

Supreme Court order blocking online access to video of Prop 8 trial is a mistake the camera-phobic justices will regret

PETER SCHEER—It’s hard to imagine a video of lawyers debating points of constitutional law going viral on YouTube, but the audience for the Proposition 8 trial — a lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage — is potentially vast. Unfortunately, that audience will have to wait. As the trial began, the U.S. [...]

More power to Google for its civil disobedience in China. Why does US-backed rival Baidu.com get a free ride?

BY PETER SCHEER—It’s not every day that a public corporation engages in what amounts to civil disobedience. But that, in effect, is what Google has done in halting censorship of search results on Google.cn–the Chinese language version of Google that is available inside China–in defiance of China’s laws.
More power to Google. Its unilateral action, coupled [...]

In Separate Moves, State and Federal Courts in California OK Policy Changes Allowing Greater Public Access

BY PETER SCHEER — The courts in California are often criticized for being out of step with the rest of the country. A willingness among judges to deviate from national orthodoxy is not necessarily a bad thing, however.
Just this week the administrative arm of the California Supreme Court adopted a rule providing public access to [...]

What kind of Governor would Jerry Brown be? Don’t try to check his gubernatorial record. It’s locked up until 2038.

BY PETER SCHEER—-Attorney General Jerry Brown has taken the first formal steps toward declaring himself a candidate for Governor of California. He is, or soon will be, the deja vu candidate in a race to become the deja vu governor.
What kind of governor would Brown be? While the resumes of most candidates provide, at best, [...]

Court rules CA counties must disclose pension amounts paid to government retirees

Nov 6, 2009—In a case filed by the First Amendment Coalition, the Modesto Bee and the California Newspaper Publishers Association, a California Superior Court has ruled that county governments, upon request, must disclose–by name–their retirees’ pension payments.
The Superior Court for Stanislaus County reasoned that the public interest in access to government employees’ pensions outweighs the [...]

In taping a reporter, AG Brown’s spokesman showed bad judgment, but did he break the law?

BY PETER SCHEER — Attorney General Jerry Brown’s spokesman Scott Gerber was unceremoniously “disappeared” from Brown’s incipient gubernatorial campaign this week because of a lapse in judgment that, quite frankly, has been overblown. Gerber’s mistake: to surreptitiously record a  phone conversation with a reporter,  which was later discovered because Gerber, in a plea for changes [...]

FAC names free speech award winners–and one loser

The First Amendment Coalition, a California-based non-profit public interest group, has named the 2009 recipients of its awards for service in the cause of free speech, open government and the public’s right to know.  In contrast, the Coalition also has presented its “Darkness Award,” given in recognition of conduct that thwarts freedom of speech.
The Bill [...]

With news jobs vanishing, why are journalism schools still enrolling students?

BY PETER SCHEER—As I read about the latest contractions in the newsroom of the New York Times (100 reporters and editors) and the San Francisco Chronicle (investigative reporting staff–gone), the question occurs: Why are universities across the country continuing to churn out journalism graduates? Do they know something that the rest of us don’t? Do [...]

Assembly 2009 Program

PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE (subject to change)
Free Speech & Open Government Assembly
Saturday,  October 24, Los Angeles
8:00-9:00
Registration
9:00-10:15am
3 Panels
Tools for news coverage of local government.
Three panels (one in Spanish, a second in Vietnamese, and a third in English) will discuss specific uses of freedom of information laws and other means to obtain government records that can lead [...]

Woodward’s “leaked” Aghanistan report was declassified. How could that happen without Obama’s OK?

BY PETER SCHEER—On Monday, Washington Post investigative reporter nonpareil Bob Woodward caused a tremor inside the Beltway with an exclusive account of  Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s 66-page report to President Barack Obama, warning that without the deployment of more US troops, the administration’s Afghanistan policy will fail.
There has followed the usual Washington parlor game of pundits [...]

NEW name, NEW website, Bigger role, Same mission

Welcome to our new website. In addition to a new home (and address) on the internet, we are also announcing our new name. Instead of “California First Amendment Coalition,” the name given this organization at its birth in 1988, we are now just “FIRST AMENDMENT COALITION.” We shrunk our name to confirm our expanding role [...]

Obit: Dick Fogel, Bay City News Service founder, and long-time FAC supporter, at 86.

Richard Henry Fogel, co-founder of Bay City News Service, died last Wednesday  at 86. Fogel was among the founders of FAC in 1988. Ever a free speech advocate, he was a recipient of the James Madison Freedom of Information Career Achievement Award, among others.

By Wayne Futak
Bay City News
09/10/2009 —- Richard Henry Fogel, co-founder of San [...]

AG Opinion 07-208

In response to a request made under the California Public Records Act for the names
of peace officers involved in a critical incident, such as one in which lethal force was used,
a law enforcement agency must disclose those names unless, on the facts of the particular
case, the public interest served by not disclosing the names clearly [...]

AG Opinion 86-082

Where a county maintains a comprehensive database of property-related information
that may incidentally contain the home addresses and telephone numbers of persons who are
elected or appointed public officials, but who are not identifiable as such from the data,
Government Code section 6254.21(a) does not require the county to obtain permission from
those officials before transmitting the database over [...]

AG Opinion 07-208 (5/19/08)

In response to a request made under the California Public Records Act for the names
of peace officers involved in a critical incident, such as one in which lethal force was used,
a law enforcement agency must disclose those names unless, on the facts of the particular
case, the public interest served by not disclosing the names clearly [...]

Government officials use personal email and texting to avoid public access laws. Why not use technology to enhance accountability instead of to subvert it?

By PETER SCHEER—All public officials favor open government in principle. Who would dare say otherwise? In reality, however, they are in a perpetual search, guided by clever lawyers, for new ways to circumvent disclosure requirements–at best, because they view requests for records as a nuisance, and at worst, because they have something to hide (which [...]

Why China’s leaders need to worry about recent events in Iran: Twitter trumps the Great Firewall

BY PETER SCHEER ——As Iran has its Tianenman moment, no other government is watching events there with more anxiety than China–and with good reason. Both Iran and China are modernizing autocracies committed by a combination of ideology and fear to maintaining control over their peoples’ access to information. And, to a remarkable degree, they have [...]

FAC files amicus in US Sup Ct free speech / campaign contributions case

The First Amendment Coalition has filed an amicus brief in Citizens United v. FEC, the US Supreme Court case involving First Amendment challenges to federal campaign finance laws regulating corporate political speech during elections.
The Court held this case over for re-argument in September and invited briefing on broader issues than the case originally had been [...]

Parents denied access to juvenile court records

Q: Is it true that a court can refuse to provide a transcript of a court proceeding to the accused in a case or to the parent of the juvenile accused? What recourse is there to challenge that refusal? If the answer could depend on which state it’s in, where would you start looking to [...]

Settlement in Database Access Suit Announced

BERKELEY, CA, June 16 —The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) and MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that shows the connection between money and politics, announced today that they have settled their freedom of information lawsuit against the Office of Legislative Counsel of California, having gained the object of their suit: a machine-readable database of [...]

Access to government officials' email on personal account

QUESTION: Suppose a public official advises certain persons to communicate with him at home — either by email or letter — in order to avoid having to disclose any of those communications as public records under the California Public Records Act? Would those records, in fact, be exempt from the PRA?
ANSWER: I am not aware [...]

On access to government officials' appointment calendars

QUESTION: I requested calendar appointments of the Superintendent  for my district. He refused saying they were exempt from the Public Records Act pursuant to Govt. Code 6254(a) and (k) and 6255, as they relate to the “deliberative process.” However, I understand that the agency must clearly explain not merely state why the public interest does [...]