Nat. Lawyers Guild etc. v. City of Hayward

Summary

The court held that the California Public Records Act does not permit a public agency to charge a requester for the ordinary costs of redacting exempt material from otherwise disclosable electronic records. The statutory term "data extraction" refers to retrieving responsive data from government data stores to construct a producible record, not deleting exempt information from an existing record. The court reversed the Court of Appeal and remanded for consideration of whether some charged costs could qualify as data compilation.