Friday, January 16, 2026
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California Supreme Court:
Declaration of Past Errors May Be Available Under CPRA
Opinion Rejects Claim That Permitting Remedy Where No Recoverable Materials Remain Undisclosed Opens Floodgate Due to Fee Clause, Says Law Imposes No Duty to Preserve Data Until Limitations Period Ends
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
The California Supreme Court held yesterday that declaratory relief is available to parties requesting public records even where all existing, responsive, nonexempt records have already been turned over by a public agency, saying that a judicial finding of a past violation may be appropriate to “guide” an entity as to its handling of materials in the future.
Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, writing for a unanimous court, remarked that the court need not “delineate all circumstances in which declaratory relief may be available” under the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”). However, she declared:
“[W]e conclude that, at a minimum, declaratory relief is appropriate in situations in which an agency is reasonably likely to repeat past conduct that allegedly violates the CPRA in response to future records requests.”
Rejecting a contention that the court’s ruling will open the door to strategic litigation due to the act’s provision for mandatory attorney fees for a prevailing requester, the chief justice said:
“[This]…position assumes that affirmative declaratory relief…[is] available in response to merely ‘technical’ violations of the statute. While future cases may present that question,…we need not interpret the statute so expansively in order to resolve the case….Our narrower holding today—that the statute allows for declaratory relief at least when it functions to…guide the parties’ future conduct—should not threaten the tidal wave of litigation that the [agency] forecasts.”
Duty to Preserve
Yesterday’s decision also resolves whether the law imposes a duty on public entities to preserve materials that an agency asserts are protected by a statutory exemption from disclosure for a period of three years to ensure that a requesting party has the opportunity to meaningfully litigate whether the exception applies. Declining to find such an obligation, Guerrero wrote:
“The CPRA, an otherwise detailed statute, is silent regarding any preservation requirement, suggesting that no such requirement exists.”
Presiding Justice Maria E. Stratton of Div. Eight of this district’s Court of Appeal, sitting by assignment, joined in yesterday’s opinion. Justice Joshua P. Groban penned a concurring opinion, joined in by Justices Carol Corrigan and Leondra Kruger, to “elaborate on the circumstances” in which declaratory relief would be available.
The questions arose after the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley—a nonprofit legal services organization that touts itself as being dedicated to “advanc[ing] equity and justice for low-income individuals”—filed a series of public records requests with the City of Gilroy regarding cleanups of homeless encampments by the municipality’s police department.
Three requests were submitted in late 2018 seeking information on such efforts going back to the beginning of 2015. None of the submissions mentioned footage from body-worn cameras.
In response, Gilroy released some materials but asserted that the investigative materials exemption found at Gov. Code §7923.600, which provides that “this division does not require the disclosure of records of…investigations conducted by,…any…police agency…for…law enforcement…purposes,” precluded further disclosures.
Second Request
After the foundation submitted another request, in May 2019, focusing specifically on the body-camera recordings, the city again cited §7923.600. The requesting party announced that it would be filing a writ petition to seek the data.
The following October, Gilroy released the requested footage from 2018 and 2019 sweeps that did not result in citations or arrests and informed the foundation that it had no other responsive, nonexempt records to hand over.
In late 2020, the Law Foundation filed a petition for writ of mandate and complaint for equitable relief, alleging violations of the CPRA by the city and requesting declaratory relief that the locality had “failed to produce responsive records that existed at the time” of the 2018 request, leading to the routine destruction of some covered materials.
On Oct. 1, 2021, Santa Clarita Superior Court Judge Nahal Iravani-Sani declared that the city “violated the CPRA by conducting an inadequate search” in 2018 and “had a duty to…watch the…footage before asserting a blanket exemption.” The judge found no similar violations of the CPRA relating to the handling of the 2019 request and concluded that the act did not impose a retention requirement.
Each side filed writ petitions in the Sixth District Court of Appeal challenging portions of the order. In an October 2023 opinion, the panel held that the CPRA does not permit declaratory relief other than to determine a public agency’s obligation to disclose and does not contain a retention requirement.
Guerrero pointed out that Government Code §7923.000, as part of the CPRA, allows a person to “institute a proceeding for injunctive or declaratory relief, or for a writ of mandate, in any court of competent jurisdiction, to enforce that person’s right under this division to inspect or receive a copy of any public record” and that an agency is required to make a reasonable effort to segregate exempt from nonexempt data in recoverable material.
Unambiguous Language
Looking to the plain language of the statutory scheme, she opined:
“The City argues that declaratory relief under the CPRA is restricted to whether a requester is entitled to certain records, or classes of records, that have not yet been made available by an agency. But the statute does not set out any such limitation.”
Saying that “the trial court’s declarations, which concerned the City’s responses to public records requests involving bodycam footage captured by law enforcement, addressed contested issues…that were sufficiently likely to recur,” she reasoned that “declaratory relief is appropriate in these circumstances to help guide the parties’ future conduct and inform their rights and responsibilities under the CPRA.”
The court declined to address a challenge to a third declaration which addresses the timeliness of the agency’s responses, saying it was unnecessary to resolve the question “in order to answer the legal question before us” and commenting, in a footnote, that, “[u]pon remand, the Court of Appeal can consider whether the trial court’s third declaration is authorized under the CPRA.”
As to the retention issue, she remarked:
“[T]he CPRA’s text does not include a retention obligation….[and] the CPRA’s legislative history indicates that the Legislature did not perceive it as imposing a retention requirement….[T]he presence of retention periods in other statutes applicable to records commonly sought through CPRA litigation, and the penalties for spoliation in the litigation context, assuage concerns…and reinforce the conclusion that the failure to include a preservation requirement in the CPRA was intentional.”
The chief justice declared:
“The Court of Appeal correctly held that the CPRA does not ‘impose a duty upon public agencies to preserve for three years all documents responsive to a public records request that have been withheld as exempt.’…We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal, however, insofar as it unduly limited the scope of declaratory relief available under the CPRA, and we remand the case to the Court of Appeal for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
Groban’s View
Saying that “[d]eclaratory relief under the CPRA should be understood to carry the same meaning and scope that courts have long attributed to the general declaratory relief statute, Code of Civil Procedure section 1060,” which limits the remedy to circumstances where a decree can offer prospective relief, he argued:
“Consistent with this understanding, the CPRA does not authorize declaratory relief for the sole purpose of declaring that an agency’s past conduct violated the CPRA where there is no evidence of a pattern or practice of violations or where the agency does not dispute its legal obligations under the CPRA.”
The jurist continued:
“[I]f the Legislature had intended declaratory relief under the CPRA to depart from its usual prospective function…[,] I would expect a more explicit expression of that intent in the statute’s text or legislative history.”
Asserting that the CPRA’s mandatory fee provision makes the “need for an express desire to deviate from our default rule…especially crucial” given that such costs are not recoverable under §1060, he said:
“[T]he CPRA does not entitle a party to declaratory relief where the relief sought is not likely to affect future requests for public records or future conduct relating to such requests. Permitting such broad relief could improperly incentivize members of the public to seek declaratory relief not for the purpose of addressing an actual harm, but merely to obtain attorney’s fees.”
However, he wrote:
“I would find, as does the majority, that the first two aspects of the trial court’s declaratory relief…were proper under the CPRA because they resolved contested legal rights and obligations of the parties….[as] the City continued to assert that all bodycam footage was exempt from production. It is therefore likely that the City…would assert blanket exemptions covering the production of bodycam footage in the future, absent declaratory relief.”
The case is City of Gilroy v. Superior Court, 2026 S.O.S. 124.
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