Correspondence About UC Irvine Professor’s Alleged Plagiarism Is Public Record, Subject to Disclosure
From Iloh v. Regents, decided Friday by the California Court of Appeal (Justice Thomas Goethals, joined by Judges Maurice Sanchez and Joanne Motoike):
An assistant professor at a public university submitted four articles on topics in her field of study to various academic journals unaffiliated with her university. All four of those articles were later either retracted or corrected by the journals, at least in part due to inaccurate references or text overlap from uncited sources. Soon after that, the professor left her position at the university.
A third party investigating the article retractions sent the university a request under the California Public Records Act (CPRA) seeking certain postpublication communications between the professor, the university, and the journals regarding the retracted articles. The university determined the requested documents were subject to disclosure; the professor disagreed, filed a petition for writ of mandate, and sought a preliminary injunction to prevent disclosure….
“The [C]PRA, enacted in 1968, grants access to public records held by state and local agencies. [Citation.] Modeled after the federal Freedom of Information Act, the [C]PRA was enacted for the purpose of increasing freedom of information by giving members of the public access to records in the possession of state and local agencies. [Citation.] Such ‘access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business,’ the Legislature declared, ‘is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state.'”
Consistent with that fundamental right of access to information, the CPRA dictates that “every person has [the] right to inspect any public record,” except those records expressly exempted from disclosure. The CPRA broadly defines ‘”public records'” to include “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency.” [The California] Constitution requires that these provisions furthering the people’s right of access to information be “broadly construed.”
“Nevertheless, the act does not confer an absolute right of access. As part of the CPRA, the Legislature included a provision declaring it was ‘mindful of the right of individuals to privacy.’ [Citation.] This express policy declaration ‘”bespeaks legislative concern for individual privacy as well as disclosure.”‘”
To balance those competing goals of privacy and public access, the CPRA includes numerous exemptions that permit public agencies to refuse disclosure of certain public records. For example, section 7927.700 exempts from disclosure any “personnel, medical, or similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Additionally, a catchall exemption permits a public agency to withhold records if it can demonstrate “on the facts of the particular case the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record.”…
The Requested Records Are Public Records
Applying those authorities here, we first must determine whether the requested records are public records subject to disclosure under the CPRA. As noted, unless an exemption applies, the CPRA requires disclosure of any “public record,” which the act defines as “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency.” The parties do not dispute that UCI, as a public university, qualifies as a state agency. Further, the requested correspondence was sent and received using UCI e-mail addresses and therefore is “owned, used, or retained” by a state agency. The controlling question, therefore, is whether the requested documents “contain[ ] information relating to the conduct of the p
Article from Reason.com
