California

An independent journalist was forcibly removed from the California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative meeting after he asked a question about the Initiative’s position on ocean industrialization, the First Amendment Coalition reported.

A California lawmaker and students at a state university said they would hand over documents to the state attorney general on Tuesday that would prove the school tried to destroy evidence of the speaking fee it agreed to pay former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for an upcoming anniversary gala, California Watch and The Los Angeles Times reported.

California's governor ordered state corrections officials on Tuesday to stop destroying parole files for sex offenders, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Prior to the order, the state corrections department routinely destroyed sex offenders' files one year after being discharged from parole.

A federal court in San Francisco announced on Friday that it is not planning to broadcast closing arguments in the trial over California's gay marriage ban, despite media reports to the contrary.

As of now, Judge Vaughn Walker has not asked that Perry v. Schwarzenegger be included in a pilot program that allows the broadcast of certain non-jury civil trials.

A California appellate court yesterday found that a lawsuit by "indie" rock musicians  against Rolling Stone over a feature article inside fold-out advertising pages should be dismissed under the state anti-SLAPP statute.

A San Francisco appeals court held that the article in question, a visual representation of a variety of bands in the “Indie Rock Universe,” was noncommercial speech protected by the First Amendment.

A California state Senate committee passed the latest incarnation of a bill today that would extend existing free-speech laws to charter schools. The bill will likely go to the full floor for a vote as early as next week.

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear a case about whether employee text messages sent on employer-issued phones are private.

The case began when a police chief in Ontario, California, read sexually explicit text messages sent between officers. Though the city claims it told employees, including police officers, their electronic communications could be reviewed, four officers sued the police department, claiming the review violated their privacy rights.

Journalism students at the University of Southern California are waging a battle to obtain the death certificates of individuals who have died from the H1N1 virus, the school's online news site Neon Tommy reported.

The founder of the gossip network TMZ said this week he is outraged that Los Angeles authorities obtained his telephone records during an investigation into who leaked news of Mel Gibson's 2006 arrest for drunken driving, LA Observed reported.

Santa Clara County must pay a nonprofit watchdog group $500,000 to cover its legal fees after a three-year dispute over whether the county could withhold or charge extremely high fees for electronic maps that were sought during a public records request, the San Jose Mercury News reported.