A Court Says Agencies Can Delay Records Responses Indefinitely and We Must Fight It

In 2015, we sent San Diego Unified School District a public records request for documents related to an educator we had been investigating whom former students had accused of sexually harassing and assaulting them. The district provided next to nothing in response. 

We worked with district officials for the next six months to try to get more but nothing more came.  

We had many public records requests in front of San Diego Unified and it was taking them an average of 399 days to respond. When we learned that the district was adopting a plan to destroy emails that were over six months old, we filed a lawsuit to stop it. We did stop it and we expanded our complaint to include the district’s unacceptable delays in responding to our requests.  

That’s how a six-year legal case against San Diego Unified began. It has now ended with a ruling that puts in question whether a public agency ever has to respond to a records request at all. It’s a ruling we must fight and that’s a fight we need your help to win. 

One of the requests we had made was for records about that teacher, Martin Teachworth.  

The district had provided us very little when we asked for complaints and investigations and anything about the many allegations we had heard. As we proceeded with the litigation, something remarkable happened. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing began a review of Teachworth’s suitability for the classroom. We had, by then, been able to compile stories without district documents of allegations against him that stretched back years. The story became a monumental one for us. It led to dozens of other tips and, not surprisingly, many more public records lawsuits. In most cases, we were asking for documents and districts across the county were trying to give them to us but teachers and their unions were fighting that disclosure.  

As we were talking with San Diego Unified about our ongoing litigation against them, they revealed something shocking. They told us that, as part of a response to a request for records by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, San Diego Unified officials found a batch of documents in an abandoned desk.  

To us this seemed like a bombshell. The district was clearly not complying with the Public Records Act, which requires prompt distribution of public records. How could it not force the district to settle our case? They had not done a thorough search for these documents and we had established, without argument, district officials took more than a year on average to provide responsive documents to 31 of our requests – sometimes delaying for several years.  

The judge, Keri Katz, however, disagreed. The discovered documents in the abandoned desk were not a bombshell and she accepted, without question, all of the district’s excuses. She said we failed to establish the Teachworth documents discovered ever existed when we asked for them and when the district responded to that request. She ruled that they were hard copies of the documents and we could not prove they were ever electronic documents the district could have and should have found. (Reminder: The district did find them when a state agency requested them.) 

As for the delays, she ruled those are fine. District officials and their attorneys listed a bevy of reasons why they had to delay production of the records we requested, including that they had to help us modify and narrow search terms; the records covered many years sometimes and would include a “large volume” of documents; there were IT and technical problems; physical documents were in different storage locations; there were employee furloughs and untimely holidays; legal review and redaction of the records was time consuming. The list goes on and on.  

In short, a court has now found that San Diego Unified did nothing wrong by delaying the production of responsive records to the public and all their myriad reasons for the delay were valid despite the Public Records Act’s requirement that they be distributed promptly.  

“The danger becomes that the word ‘prompt’ becomes meaningless and agencies can delay distribution of records indefinitely until a person goes away or the issue doesn’t have the same relevance it does when the documents were requested,” said Felix Tinkov, our public records attorney who has litigated the case.  

That’s alarming but it’s not established precedent. That’s why we must appeal and ask a higher court to clarify that this is not true – an agency cannot indefinitely delay distribution of records or fail to distribute at all for any reason they can come up with. We believe “prompt” has a meaning that is fewer than 399 days.  

San Diego Unified has decided to make this as painful as possible for us. For the first time, after litigation with one of these agencies, they are making us pay for their attorneys’ court costs (not fees). It’s not going to bankrupt us – it’s $8,143.37 – but for a small nonprofit, that still hurts.  

So I am coming to you for help. Will you help us pay those costs and finance the appeal? There is no doubt that our requests to public agencies are often annoying and lengthy. But we have revealed vital information for years about abusive teachers, financial problems and conflicts of interest. The Public Records Act is not just for journalists like us but for the public in general. If you are trying to get information about your student and a situation that occurred, under this interpretation of the law, they could delay responding until your child has graduated and moved on.