FAC’s Brown Act Primer

Asked & Answered: Your questions answered by FAC lawyers

• A&A: Yelp violates right to freedom of speech by “filtering” good reviews out, leaving bad ones in! May 16, 2012
  Q:  My reputation has been attacked by a few Yelpers, who never used my services, or met me.   However, my concern is that right now about 75% of my positive reviews are “filtered” while all the negatives mostly stay at the top! Apparently, Yelp is not interested in real experience of those who really use […]
• A&A: Is it legal to sell public records for profit? May 16, 2012
  Q: Can a person request records under the CA Public Records Act and then make money off of the re-distribution of these records? For example, can the records be put on a website that has advertising or can the records be outright sold? Clearly people could still request the records directly from the agency if […]
• A&A: Parents not invited to meeting that resulted in removing their autistic student from public school May 16, 2012
  Q: A group of parents circulated a petition to remove my autistic son from a public school. They submitted this petition to a Board of Education member. There were a series of email exchanges between the parents and Board member. At the parents’ email requests, the Board Member arranged a meeting with himself, the Superintendent, […]
• A&A: City gone wild with continual Brown Act and CPRA violations May 16, 2012
  Q: At last night’s city council meeting one city councilperson was censored by having his microphone turned off in the middle of his public comments. He was talking about how the city has lost millions [like the city of Bell] and given away millions more as favors to certain council and city staff friends. Actions […]