The California Office of Emergency Services will begin automatically deleting many staff emails after 90 days, under a new policy set to take effect January 4, 2027. The agency, which oversees disaster preparedness and coordinates relief efforts during wildfires and earthquakes, will leave it largely up to individual employees to decide which messages count as key records worth saving before the clock runs out.
Cal OES Chief Information Officer Michael Crews wrote that the change is meant to strengthen information security, promote sound data management, and align with statewide records-management requirements, according to The Sacramento Bee. Under the policy, Cal OES will automatically delete routine emails after the 90-day threshold unless an employee believes a message documents a decision or official action worth preserving. Staff will be able to hang onto emails they consider important by moving them into a records management system such as Microsoft OneDrive, the newspaper reported.
There is no newly imposed penalty for employees who fail to correctly determine whether an email is routine or a key record, per the same account. Mailboxes already flagged as subject to legal scrutiny are excluded from the automatic deletion process, and the agency has said key records will be kept.
A Transparency Advocate Raises Red Flags
First Amendment Coalition Legal Director David Loy told the Bee the policy presents transparency concerns, given that it hands individual staffers the responsibility of judging what counts as a record worth saving. Still, Loy said routine email deletions of the kind Cal OES is adopting are legal, while also cautioning that once a public records request or lawsuit is filed, an agency must preserve relevant records until that matter is resolved. Loy has repeatedly represented media and transparency groups challenging public agency record destruction, arguing that rapid purges can undermine government oversight, according to LAist.
The California Secretary of State's Office generally sets record-retention guidelines for the state, but it told the Bee it has no policy affecting routine emails, leaving individual agencies like Cal OES to craft their own short deletion windows. That gap traces back to 2019, when Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 1184, a bill that would have required all California public agencies to preserve business-related electronic mail for at least two years, citing data management burdens and taxpayer costs, according to Lozano Smith.
Court Fight Over Deleted Body-Camera Footage Looms Large
The legal backdrop for Cal OES's new policy includes a January 2026 California Supreme Court ruling in *City of Gilroy v. Superior Court*, which determined that the California Public Records Act alone does not impose data-retention requirements on public agencies. That case involved body-camera footage subject to a public records request: the City of Gilroy had a one-year retention policy for such footage, and the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley had requested body-camera footage of homeless encampment sweeps dating back to 2016, ultimately receiving videos only from 2018 and 2019. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, who drafted the opinion, wrote that courts may still grant declaratory relief under the CPRA to review recurring agency practices that affect future compliance, even after responsive records have already been produced or destroyed, according to Hanson Bridgett LLP.
That precedent matters because short email-deletion windows have run into trouble in California courts before. In 2020, the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled in *Golden Door Properties, LLC v. Superior Court* that San Diego County's 60-day automatic email deletion policy violated environmental review requirements, holding that lead agencies must preserve internal email correspondence for administrative records, per Somach Simmons & Dunn. And in 2016, a California court found that Caltrans's 120-day automatic email deletion policy amounted to spoliation of evidence during active litigation, according to Consumer Watchdog.
Cal OES Is Not Alone Among State Agencies
Cal OES's 90-day window puts it in line with at least one other major state department. The California Environmental Protection Agency maintains a similar policy that automatically deletes informal or “transitory” emails after 90 days, the watchdog group's reporting noted. Public outcry over email purges at the Department of Insurance also pushed lawmakers to pass Assembly Bill 2370 in May 2022, establishing a mandatory two-year public record retention minimum for state agencies, though that mandate has not stopped individual departments like Cal OES from adopting shorter windows for routine correspondence.
Cal OES already operates under separate, unrelated documentation deadlines tied to its emergency-response role. Under Title 19, Section 2450 of the California Code of Regulations, state agencies responding to declared local emergencies must complete and transmit an official after-action report within 90 days of an incident's conclusion. That existing 90-day framework for disaster reporting is separate from the new email retention policy, but it underscores how central the 90-day window has become to how the agency documents its work, whether during a wildfire response or in routine office correspondence.
The rollout of the email policy comes as Cal OES has already faced scrutiny this year over its handling of statewide infrastructure spending, following GOP demands for 911 funding receipts earlier this year. Whether transparency advocates will pursue a declaratory relief action against Cal OES's new deletion practice, as the Gilroy ruling now allows for recurring agency policies, remains to be seen.
