Nevada County Superior Court Orders County to Disclose Illegally Withheld Public Records
On June 21, 2023, after 10 months of litigation, the Honorable S. Robert Tice-Raskin ordered the Nevada County Election office to release to the public a tranche of public records related to the November 2020 General Election, which Nevada County had been refusing to disclose for nearly two years despite analogous records from San Francisco’s election office being provided to the general public and identical records being provided by Stanislaus County.
In the summer of 2021 pursuant to the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”), Amy Young requested from Gregory Diaz and Natalie Adona copies of public records relating to the 2020 General Election in the custody and control of the county election office. After over a year of refusals and various statements that the County did not possess the records and with the destruction of the requested records pending on September 3, 2022, Young, through her attorneys Susan Kay McGuire and Barry W. Pruett, filed an emergency petition with the Nevada County Superior Court on August 17, 2022. Young asked the Court to order the County to preserve the requested records and, at the conclusion of the litigation, to release the public records to Young. On August 18, 2022, the Honorable S. Robert Tice-Raskin ordered the County to preserve the requested records until the litigation could be completed.
In response to Young’s request for a court order to disclose the public records, Nevada County argued to the Court that they did not possess the requested records and that Young was somehow an election denier and, simply by making these requests for public records, exposed the County officials to potential threats of violence by third-parties. At the conclusion of the litigation, the Court ordered Natalie Adona, the Nevada County official charged with conducting elections, to release all the public records requested by Young, except for digital ballot images.
After the Court issued the order, Adona took to the airwaves to assert that the success of Young’s lawsuit against the Nevada County election office resulted in the disclosure of “boring documents.” Such a statement begs the question of why the election office and Adona fought Young so fervently for nearly two years and expended tens of thousands of dollars attempting to prevent the legal disclosure if the public records requested by Young were just “boring documents.”
During the litigation, the Nevada County election office stated to the Court that “ensuring fair elections is the most fundamental of government interests.” Pruett agreed and added that “the County’s duty is actually to conduct fair and transparent elections pursuant to both election law and the CPRA. Thankfully, the Court concluded that transparency is paramount in connection with local elections.”
Young, in her informational release to local media, stated as follows:
I was happy to hear that you have finally started to cover the legal action I had to take to obtain public election records from Nevada County. I am also overjoyed that the County will not continue to fight disclosure of election records that other counties have given freely, namely, tabulator tapes and audit logs.
As the court filings show, my various records requests date back to June of 2021. In August of 2022 I made a final good faith request for the Cast Vote Record report – after receiving a response on February 1, 2022, which stated “There is no document in our office that fulfills your request” to my January 28, 2022, request for the Cast Vote Record report.
Public records of any kind are not useless to the public. I’m sure most people would agree that transparency is never a waste of time. In any event, the agency withholding records is in no position to judge whether it is useful to the public. As the Court made clear in its ruling, quoting Los Angeles Unified School Dist. v. Superior Court: “The motive of the particular requester in seeking public records is irrelevant, and the CPRA does not differentiate among those who seek access to them… Moreover, the purpose for which the requested records are to be used is likewise irrelevant.”
The Court ordered that the County has until July 21, 2023, to release the public records related to the 2020 General Election requested by Young. Young will likely seek attorney fees from the County for wrongfully withholding the public records. While Nevada County will likely compensate Young’s attorneys for their time in obtaining the order from the Nevada County Superior Court, Young will never be compensated for the massive amount of time and energy she expended order to gain access to public records, ultimately benefitting all Nevada County residents, while other counties already freely provide such access to their public.
Barry Pruett, mentioned in this article, is a member of Sierra Thread.