On 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