Excerpt from: Making Special Education Actually Work (click for full article)
In November 2012, a decision was issued by a California appellate court that requires disclosure of a public agency’s attorney fees and costs when those records are requested pursuant to a written California Public Records Act (“CPRA”) request, even while litigation is pending in which the public agency is one of the parties. The County of Los Angeles brought the matter up on appeal after it lost on this issue in a lower court, only to lose on the issue again. This can be good news for families and their attorneys who find themselves engaged in litigation on behalf of their special education students in California.
Here’s the scenario in a nutshell: CPRA requests can be submitted for public information any old time a citizen wants and a public agency can only refuse to disclose requested documents for a very limited number of reasons. A document may not be provided in response to a PRA request if it contains information that is subject to attorney-client privilege or is otherwise attorney work product. Documents specifically prepared for the pending litigation are excluded, presumably because they are covered under the attorney work product exclusion.
The problem, here, was that LA County evidently asserted the position that any documents relating to the litigation were excluded from disclosure, such as their legal expenses for the pending litigation, which the Courts failed to support. Because the public’s right to know what the government is doing with the tax dollars we give it carries so much weight, CRPA is to be interpreted broadly and its exclusions are to be interpreted narrowly. In other words, the law is more in favor of disclosure than not.
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