{"id":1808,"date":"2026-04-14T08:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/?page_id=1808"},"modified":"2026-04-14T08:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:19:07","slug":"public-interest-in-nondisclosure-is-greater-than-public-interest-in-disclosure-how-the-california-public-records-acts-catch-all-exemption-incentivizes-law","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/in-print\/volume-38-issue-4-fall-2025\/public-interest-in-nondisclosure-is-greater-than-public-interest-in-disclosure-how-the-california-public-records-acts-catch-all-exemption-incentivizes-law\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cPublic Interest in Nondisclosure is Greater than Public Interest in Disclosure\u201d: How the California Public Records Act\u2019s \u201cCatch-All\u201d Exemption Incentivizes Lawbreaking by Government Records Custodians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Much legal literature discusses the federal Freedom of Information Act. Most of it ranges in tone from concerned to hopeless; none more so than the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform\u2019s 2016 report on the law, succinctly titled \u201cFOIA Is Broken: A Report.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some work, too, looks at various state sunshine laws\u2014Texas,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Illinois,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> South Carolina,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Florida.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But surprisingly few scholars have taken a swing at the informational transparency landscape of the nation\u2019s most populous state<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u2014few legal scholars, at least.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This is especially notable because California\u2019s public records law has a particular provision, known colloquially as the \u201ccatch-all exemption,\u201d that doesn\u2019t appear in FOIA and has a significant impact on how many records requests play out. The exemption deserves a deeper examination.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This Note will attempt to undertake one. First, it will briefly touch on the history and purpose of both the California Public Records Act and FOIA, the state law\u2019s predecessor and inspiration. It will then compare the two laws with the aim of examining the roots of California\u2019s catch-all exemption, explaining why such an exemption was explicitly written <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">out<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of the federal law (with unclear success). Finally, it will look to California agencies\u2019 misuse of the catch-all exemption and several of its fellow highly discretionary exceptions, and it will discuss how the exemptions\u2019 ambiguity and the law\u2019s overall lack of enforcement mechanisms result in a system by which government records custodians, in direct contravention of the spirit of CPRA, regularly deny records requests for unjustifiable reasons such as inconvenience or self-protection.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/24\/2026\/04\/GT-GJLE250060.pdf\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much legal literature discusses the federal Freedom of Information Act. Most of it ranges in tone from concerned to hopeless; none more so than the House Committee on Oversight and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14207,"featured_media":0,"parent":1755,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1808","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1810,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1808\/revisions\/1810"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}