California

A Native American newspaper in a remote region of northern California will not be able to publish again unless editors can justify the publication's budget and content to tribal leaders, one of the paper's editors said Wednesday.

The names and pension amounts of retired county employees are public records that are useful in holding the government accountable, a California appeals court ruled Tuesday in San Diego County Employees Retirement Association v. California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

A California appellate court ruled Friday that the common law rule of presumptive access to public information extends to the State Bar of California’s records on bar admissions. The ruling opens the possibility that UCLA law professor Richard Sander could gain access to state bar records to compare performance results among different racial and ethnic groups on the California bar exam.

A San Diego radio talk show commentator was shielded from libel claims brought by a former public high school principal after reporting on an audit into whether the principal used school resources to sell ads for a gay magazine, a California appellate court ruled last week.

A California appeals court ruled Tuesday that state agencies can charge licensing fees to the public for access to electronic geographic information system data stored in geographical mapping programs.

Cameras in the courtroom continue to incite debate, with a motion filed this week concerning the use of recordings of last year's trial court proceedings challenging Proposition 8, California's ban on gay marriage. The proponents of Proposition 8 on Wednesday asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco (9th Cir.) to order the now-retired judge who last year presided over the trial in Perry v.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the state's 3rd District Court of Appeals to revisit the case of a Sacramento juror who was ordered to consent to the release of Facebook posts he had made during a criminal trial in 2010.

The San Francisco Police Department in the past 10 months has revoked several press passes previously granted to online media outlets. The department's policy has not changed; officials are simply beginning to enforce it, the department said.

However, the founder of one of the six news outlets denied renewal of their press passes, online newspaper the San Francisco Sentinel, argued that, under the police department's policy, the Sentinel should not have been denied.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Monday that completed juror questionnaires in the upcoming criminal trial of former professional baseball player Barry Bonds will be available to the public, but the names of the jurors will remain sealed until after the trial.