A California watchdog group that tracks public employee pay has sued the state's education department, accusing it of illegally withholding the email addresses of thousands of school superintendents and business officers across the state. Transparent California, which describes itself as a watchdog group publishing compensation data for California public officials, filed suit against the California Department of Education in San Diego Superior Court last month, alleging the agency stopped releasing contact information it once handed over freely.
What Transparent California Says It Was Denied
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Transparent California requested the email addresses of every school superintendent and business officer statewide in spreadsheet form, planning to use that bulk contact list to submit records requests to 935 school districts. The California Department of Education declined to hand over the spreadsheet, even though it still publishes the same officials' email addresses on individual webpages for each school district and charter school, per the same report. The department used to publish a downloadable dataset containing that same contact information, the Union-Tribune notes, but stopped doing so.
As reported by The Coast News, the lawsuit alleges the department is now relying on a legal exemption to justify the shift, even though the same contact information remains available on the department's website. The Coast News reports the department has said publishing the dataset exposed school district officials to copious spam messages and security threats, and the department did not immediately respond to that outlet's request for comment.
The Legal Argument at the Center of the Case
Per the Union-Tribune, the department cited a catch-all exemption in the California Public Records Act and argued that the public interest in keeping the spreadsheet's email addresses private outweighs the public interest in releasing them. Under state law, an agency withholding a record must show either that it falls under an express exemption in the Public Records Act or that, in that specific case, the public interest served by nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure, according to California Legislative Information. If a court determines that an agency's refusal to disclose a record isn't justified, the same legislative source notes that the court is required to order the official to make the record public.
Todd Maddison, research director for Transparent California, disagreed with the department's decision, the Union-Tribune reports, warning that any agency in California could lean on the same catch-all argument to block the public from contacting officials and employees altogether. The department declined to comment when reached for the Union-Tribune's report.
A Watchdog Built on Bulk Records Requests
Transparent California, which is run by the Nevada Policy Research Institute, bills itself as the largest publicly accessible source of California officials' pay and pension data, and it submits thousands of public records requests to public agencies every year to keep that database current. The group has said it collects key public officials' contact information specifically so it can use it to submit further requests under the California Public Records Act — the same bulk approach at the heart of this dispute over 935 school districts' worth of email addresses.
The organization's reach has grown considerably in recent years. Transparent California said its database has included data on 2.7 million public employees from 2,518 agencies and 1.4 million pension records from 54 pension plans, all obtained through Public Records Act requests and published online for free, according to the Antioch Herald. The group also reported collecting compensation data from 1,055 K-12 districts, compared with 424 gathered by the State Controller's Office over the same period, the outlet noted, and said it had begun collecting 2023 compensation records as its next round of data collection got underway.
A Comparable Fight Over Records Access
Transparent California has pointed to a separate dispute it says shows the stakes of withholding records: the group says a judge ordered Cal State San Marcos to disclose requested public records and pay nearly $100,000 in costs and attorney's fees in a similar case, according to The Coast News. It remains to be seen whether the San Diego Superior Court will view the education department's withheld spreadsheet the same way, but the case adds to a broader pattern of California agencies facing legal pressure over how they interpret exemptions under the state's records law.
