Journalist Can’t Be Sued for Publishing Sealed Arrest Report

Thursday, October 1, 2026

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Court of Appeal:

Journalist Can’t Be Sued for Publishing Sealed Arrest Report

Opinion Says Lawsuit Over Story Linking Domestic Violence Incident Account Against Tech CEO Is SLAPP Even if Document Was Under Seal, Rejects View That Disclosure Was ‘Illegal’ in Light of First Amendment

By Kimber Cooley, associate editor

MAURY BLACKMAN

plaintiff

Div. Four of the First District Court of Appeal has affirmed an order specially striking all claims against an independent journalist and the Substack platform that hosts his newsletter in a lawsuit accusing the defendants of violating California law by publishing the arrest record of a technology company CEO, who held a security clearance relating to defense contracts, that was ordered sealed by a judge after prosecutors declined to pursue charges.

Declaring that the lawsuit ran afoul of California’s anti-SLAPP statute, the court described the case as one “which presents a clash between plaintiff’s privacy rights and the freedom of the press” and remarked:

“[W]hile we are mindful that the United States Supreme Court has purposefully proceeded on a case-by-case basis in this sensitive area of law and none of the high court’s prior opinions is factually on all fours with this case, we conclude that the First Amendment protects the lawfully obtained truthful publication of the information at issue….”

The anti-SLAPP law, found at Code of Civil Procedure §425.16, provides:

“A cause of action against a person arising from any act of that person in furtherance of the person’s right of petition or free speech under the United States Constitution or the California Constitution in connection with a public issue shall be subject to a special motion to strike, unless the court determines that the plaintiff has established that there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim.”

Presiding Justice Tracie L. Brown authored the opinion, filed late Tuesday, rejecting the plaintiff’s view that the sealing of the arrest record took the document out of the public sphere. She wrote:

“[S]peech can implicate an issue of public interest even though statutory protections exist to keep that information confidential.”

2021 Arrest

The question arose after journalist Jack Poulson distributed a story revealing the December 2021 domestic-violence arrest of Maury Blackman, who, at the time of publication, was serving as the chief executive of Premise Data, a defense contractor that had made headlines for allegedly paying overseas users to take photographs and provide location data purportedly used by the government in intelligence operations.

Poulson ran the story in his All-Source Intelligence newsletter on Sept. 14, 2023, including a link to a redacted copy of the police report. According to the writer, he had received the document from a confidential source and was unaware that the information had been subjected to a court order under Penal Code §851.91, which provides:

“A person who has suffered an arrest that did not result in a conviction may petition the court to have his or her arrest and related records sealed.”

Blackman alleged that an attorney representing former Premise Data employees in a lawsuit with the company, Newton Oldfather, had requested the document from the San Francisco Police Department (“SFPD”) and obtained a copy containing a unique watermark that was also found on the one published by Poulson.

In the months that followed, Poulson published additional pieces indicating that a party purporting to represent Blackman had tried to bribe him to take down the report and covering the executive’s December 2023 resignation.

Complaint Filed

Blackman filed a complaint against Substack Inc., Poulson, and the organization the journalist founded, Tech Inquiry, Inc., in October 2024, asserting claims including negligence, intentional interference with prospective economic relations, public disclosure of private facts, defamation, and violations of Penal Code provisions governing the sealing and distribution of arrest records, including §851.92, which specifies:

“[U]nless specifically authorized by this section, a person or entity, other than a criminal justice agency or the person whose arrest was sealed, who disseminates information relating to a sealed arrest is subject to a civil penalty of not less than five hundred dollars ($500) and not more than two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) per violation.”

On Feb. 24 of last year, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Christine Van Aken granted anti-SLAPP motions filed by the defendants, finding that the conduct at issue was covered by subdivision (e)(3) of the statute, which defines protected speech as including “any written or oral statement or writing made in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest.”

At the second step of the anti-SLAPP analysis, she reasoned that the First Amendment barred Blackman’s claims and that the causes of action against Substack and Tech Inquiry were further foreclosed due to §230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act.

In August 2025, the judge awarded attorney fees to Poulson and Tech Inquiry, in aggregate amounts exceeding $185,000, and ordered the plaintiff to pay Substack more than $225,000 in litigation costs under a division of the anti-SLAPP scheme providing for the recovery of legal expenses.

Speech at Issue

Brown rejected Blackman’s characterization of his causes of action as “aris[ing] out of his privacy rights,” saying that “speech gave rise to the claims at issue.” She noted that the plaintiff did not dispute that the release was in a public forum and turned to the question of whether the news stories concerned “an issue of public interest.”

She opined that “it seems undisputed that the federal government’s operations with respect to national security and defense are matters of legitimate public interest,” and pointed to a June 2021 Wall Street Journal story reporting that the company’s so-called “gig workers” were “unwittingly” providing “basic intelligence to the U.S. military using only a consumer app on their smartphones.”

The court granted a request for judicial notice of the existence of the story as well as a subsequent article, which ran in the publication the following year, covering accusations by Ukrainian officials that the app was being used by Russia to target airstrikes in the ongoing conflict. Based on the reports, the jurist remarked:

“Considering the above-described publications, we conclude that Premise Data’s work for the United States government was a matter of public interest.”

Describing “whether Blackman’s arrest was also an issue of public interest” as “[t]he harder question,” she reasoned that his role as an executive “for an entity paid to gather data abroad for the federal government and his security clearance” placed the plaintiff “in a position of public trust.” She cited federal regulations governing the issuance of a security clearance and commented:

“Our federal government has…concluded that prior arrests should be considered in the predictive calculus of whether to entrust a person with sensitive government information during his or her employment….[W]e cannot conclude that Blackman’s arrest was a matter completely untethered to his work for the federal government….”

Illegality Asserted

Blackman pointed to the 2006 California Supreme Court decision in Flatley v. Mauro, which held that “a defendant whose assertedly protected speech or petitioning activity was illegal as a matter of law…cannot use the anti-SLAPP statute to strike the plaintiff’s complaint.” Brown disagreed that the decision foreclosed the defendants’ anti-SLAPP requests, saying:

“Our Supreme Court ‘made it clear…that conduct must be illegal as a matter of law to defeat a defendant’s showing of protected activity. The defendant must concede the point, or the evidence conclusively demonstrate it, for a claim of illegality to defeat an anti-SLAPP motion at the first step.’ ”

Finding the standard to be unmet, she wrote:

“Here, Blackman asserts that defendants violated Penal Code sections 851.92, 11143, 13304, and 166, and Labor Code section 432.7….[D]efendants here factually and legally dispute whether their conduct is actionable under the statutes at issue, and the evidence does not conclusively demonstrate illegality.”

She highlighted Supreme Court jurisprudence favoring protections for the truthful publication of matters in the public interest and added:

“The only logical inference to be drawn from Blackman’s evidence that the SFPD released an unrestricted copy of the incident report with a unique watermark and that the report Poulson published contained this unique watermark is that the government originally disclosed the copy of the incident report at issue without restriction.”

Brown continued:

“The press is responsible for reporting on government operations, including those of the police, and, by publicly releasing the incident report without restriction, the government impliedly determined its dissemination was in the public interest….The government cannot fairly punish a media defendant for relying on that determination.”

The jurist was unpersuaded by Blackman’s claim that the First Amendment argument was really a “thinly veiled request to unseal” the record in contravention of a lawful order and said:

“The issue here is whether the First Amendment protects the lawfully obtained truthful disclosure of information of public significance at issue here, not whether defendants can unseal documents sealed by the court.”

The case is Blackman v. Substack Inc., A173244.