Public employees’ communications about public business are subject to disclosure under the Cal. Public Records Act even if employees use personal account, Cal. SC. holds

main.index.cityhall.greenOn March 2, 2017, the California Supreme Court held that the electronic communications of a public employee about the conduct of public business may be subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”) even if the employee used a personal account.

The court considered how the law, originally designed to cover paper documents, applies to evolving methods of electronic communications in an environment where not all employment-related activity occurs during a conventional workday, or in an employer-maintained workplace. The law intends to favor public access over privacy concerns — the Court concluded that “a city employee’s writings about public business are not excluded from CPRA simply because they have been sent, received, or stored in a personal account.”

City of San Jose v. Superior Court, 2 Cal. 5th 608, 2017 Cal. LEXIS 1607 (Cal. Mar. 2, 2017) is available at http://www.courts.ca.gov…            Open PDF

 

Originally published on Technethics on April 2017

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