Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : High Court Upholds Public Agency-Attorney Confidentiality

In its second decision this month restricting public access to government information, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously in a Palmdale case Thursday that public agencies are entitled to keep confidential any written legal advice from their attorneys.

Attorneys for Palmdale and other government agencies applauded the court’s ruling, saying it simply maintains the legal status quo. But public access advocates said the court’s ruling narrows the public’s right to government information and invites abuses of secrecy.

“A city council needs freedom to confer with its lawyers confidentially in order to obtain adequate advice, just as does a private citizen who seeks legal counsel,” wrote Associate Justice Stanley Mosk in a 27-page opinion that dealt only with written communications.

The ruling was believed to be the state high court’s first ever dealing with the state’s open meetings law. Palmdale homeowner Charmaine Roberts sued the city in 1989 for refusing to release a city attorney memo dealing with a development project that the City Council had discussed in public.

Beverly Hills attorney Barbara Blinderman, who represented Roberts, complained the court’s ruling “exempts anything that’s channeled through an attorney from the public access laws.” Blinderman added, “How do you hold them accountable if you don’t know what they’re saying?”

But Los Angeles attorney Glenn Watson, who represented Palmdale in the case, said the court simply upheld the established right to confidential communication between a public agency and its attorney, a form of the so-called attorney-client privilege.

Earlier this month, overruling a Court of Appeal decision, the Supreme Court held that records of a wide variety of law-enforcement investigations, even after the cases are closed, are permanently exempt from disclosure under the state’s public records act.

On Thursday, the high court reversed another appeals court ruling from last year that ordered Palmdale to release the attorney’s memo, finding the City Council had violated the state’s open meetings law. The project at issue, a proposed AM-PM Mini Market, was approved but never built.

Blinderman and others said they now plan to ask the Legislature to pass laws restoring the access rights curbed by both court rulings. “It’s certainly not a happy year for the state’s freedom of information policy,” said attorney Terry Francke of the California First Amendment Coalition.