In National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter v. City of Hayward, published May 28, 2020, the California Supreme Court reversed an appellate court decision allowing a city to shift the cost of editing exempt material out of police body camera footage requested under the California Public Records Act. At issue was interpretation of Government Code section 6253.9, subdivision (b)(2). Section 6253.9 requires agencies to produce electronic records requested under the CPRA in any electronic format in which the agency holds the information. Under subdivision (b)(2), “the requester shall bear the cost of producing a copy of the record, including the cost to construct a record, and the cost of programming and computer services necessary to produce a copy of the record” if “[t]he request would require data compilation, extraction, or programming to produce the record.” The city contended that redacting exempt material from electronic records such as video footage was "extraction" for which it could recover staff time and expenses. The requester contended that "extraction" referred to constructing a record by removing data from a computer or other source. The trial court agreed with the requester. The appellate court agreed with the city.
The Supreme Court concluded that the requester's interpretation was correct. Construing the language of the statute, the legislative intent of limiting the expense of requesting electronic records (by preventing agencies from increasing expense by printing out electronic records), and the statute's purpose, the Supreme Court interpreted the term "extraction" to cover costs uniquely associated with the production of electronic record copies—including the need to retrieve responsive data to produce a record that can be released to the public—but not the costs of redacting exempt information from the record.
One justice wrote a separate concurring opinion, opining that if a data retrieval method also included simultaneous redaction of exempt material, the opinion might not limit charging the requester the cost of retrieval.
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