California

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco (9th Cir.) in late August reinstated a defamation suit filed by televangelist Rev. Frederick Price against ABC and former “20/20” correspondent John Stossel, finding a lower court’s dismissal of the case to be premature, according to court documents.

The California Court of Appeal threw out a lower court's order prohibiting the Los Angeles Times from publishing photographs of a defendant on trial for murder last week.

"[W]e conclude the superior court's order precluding publication of photographs lawfully taken unconstitutionally violates the prohibition against prior restraint of speech," wrote Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Sanjay T. Kumar in an unanimous opinion.

A California state appellate court has ordered a judge to rescind her order banning a newspaper from publishing photographs taken of a murder defendant, unless she can demonstrate a compelling reason why the pictures should not be printed.

California county officials last week withdrew a search warrant that was executed months earlier when government-authorized agents from a technology crime task force searched the home of an online news editor and seized computers and servers related to his coverage of an Apple iPhone prototype.

A judge has ruled that University of California police illegally obtained photographs from a journalist covering a campus protest.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Yolanda Northridge on Friday ordered police to return all copies of the photos taken during the December protest at the Berkeley campus, according to the Oakland, Calif.-based First Amendment Project. The judge also ordered university officials to declare under oath what agencies, if any, received copies of the photos.

A media coalition has successfully convinced a court to unseal a search warrant affidavit used to search a journalist's home for evidence about a missing iPhone prototype.

E-mail messages made public this week by a state lawmaker show top California State University officials agreed to keep secret the speaking fee it intended to pay former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, California Watch reported.

The e-mail messages were released this week to Californians Aware, a First Amendment organization that has sued university's Stanislaus campus in order to gain access to its contract with Palin.

News organizations are asking a state judge to unseal the search warrant affidavit that led to police searching an editor's phone for evidence about a missing iPhone prototype, The Los Angeles Times and Wired reported.

Police raided a California online editor’s home and seized computers and servers after he published articles about the forthcoming version of the Apple iPhone, The New York Times Media Decoder blog reported.