Court Opinion

ID: 9782195
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 18:05:58.992322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:51.775820
License: Public Domain

*304KENNARD, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
The majority holds that a public agency charged with improving and maintaining the professional qualifications of California’s peace officers must disclose for the years 1991 through 2001 the names, employing agencies, hiring dates, and firing dates of all peace officers in the state. I agree with the majority that the statutes in question require the release of the requested peace officer names. But I do not agree that the relevant statutes permit disclosure of each peace officer’s employing agency or agencies and the dates of each officer’s hiring and termination by that agency or agencies, because in my view that information is “employment history,” which the Legislature has expressly made confidential under Penal Code sections 832.7 and 832.8.
I
The Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) is a state agency that is responsible for statewide training and certifying the qualifications of peace officers. It collects information maintained in a electronic database on virtually every peace and custodial officer in the state. This case arises from a request by the Los Angeles Times to POST for information from that database listing the names, employing agencies, and hiring and termination dates of all peace officers who served at any time from 1991 through 2001. POST refused to release the information, maintaining that peace officer personnel records are confidential under Penal Code sections 832.7 and 832.8. The trial court concluded otherwise, and ordered POST to provide the requested information to the newspaper. The Court of Appeal reversed, holding that the information sought was confidential, and not subject to disclosure, because it was obtained from a personnel file maintained by the peace officers’ employing agency, and because it constituted “employment history,” an item expressly listed as confidential in subdivision (a) of Penal Code section 832.8.
The majority here properly rejects the notion that the information sought is confidential because it is the type of information that is normally contained in a personnel file. Then it considers whether a named officer’s employing agency, hiring dates and termination dates are employment history, and it concludes that they are not, based on its determination that the term employment history, “viewed in isolation, is ambiguous and susceptible” to interpretation. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 294.) Unlike the majority, I see no ambiguity in the statutory language, as I explain below.
*305II
In determining the meaning of a statute we look first to its language as “ ‘ “the most reliable indicator of legislative intent,” ’ ” giving the words used “ ' “their ordinary and usual meaning,” ’ ” and construing them in their statutory context. (Kibler v. Northern Inyo County Local Hospital Dist. (2006) 39 Cal.4th 192, 199 [46 Cal.Rptr.3d 41, 138 P.3d 193].) “ ‘If the plain, commonsense meaning of a statute’s words is unambiguous, the plain meaning controls.’ ” (People v. King (2006) 38 Cal.4th 617, 622 [42 Cal.Rptr.3d 743, 133 P.3d 636], quoting Fitch v. Select Products Co. (2005) 36 Cal.4th 812, 818 [31 Cal.Rptr.3d 591, 115 P.3d 1233].)
In addition to this general maxim of statutory construction, of relevance here is a provision of the California Constitution. In November 2004, the voters passed Proposition 59, an initiative measure reaffirming a principle long ago established by the California Public Records Act (Gov. Code, § 6250 et seq.) that the people have a right to access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 3, subd. (b)(1).) Although the initiative expressly preserved privacy protections contained in existing statutes, including “any statutory procedures” concerning the “professional qualifications of a peace officer” (Cal. Const., art. I, § 3, subd. (b)(3)), it also directed courts to narrowly construe a statute “if it limits the [people’s] right of access” to information. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 3, subd. (b)(2).) The confidentiality created for peace officer personnel records by Penal Code sections 832.7 and 832.8, which existed long before the 2002 passage of Proposition 59, must be read in light of these principles.
Penal Code section 832.7, subdivision (a), makes peace officer personnel records “confidential.” Its companion statute, Penal Code section 832.8, describes a peace officer’s personnel record as “any file maintained under that individual’s name” and containing certain enumerated types of information— personal data, medical history, election of employee benefits, employee advancement, appraisal or discipline, and complaints about professional performance. (Pen. Code, § 832, subds. (a)-(e).) The section’s focus is on “information” about an officer that is confidential; indeed, after setting out various specific categories of information, it concludes with the following catchall provision: “Any other information the disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy.” (Pen. Code, § 832.8, subd. (f), italics added.) Thus, the statutory confidentiality of personnel records is accorded to enumerated, and to otherwise private, information that is linked to a named officer. An officer’s name is nowhere mentioned in the list of enumerated confidential information.
But employment history is expressly mentioned in subdivision (a), which lists: “Personal data, including marital status, family members, educational *306and employment history, home addresses, or similar information.” (Pen. Code, § 832.8, subd. (a), italics added.) Looking at the other items enumerated in subdivision (a), the majority reasons that the examples of personal data set out are all “ ‘basic status or identifying information about the employee as he or she came to the job.’ ” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 295.) Such information is not “information that arises out of an officer’s employment.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 294.) Accordingly, the majority concludes, “employment history” is limited to previous employers and previous dates of employment supplied by a job applicant. And the majority seeks to bolster its conclusion that subdivision (a) concerns only information about applicants for jobs by citing other subdivisions of the statute that, according to the majority, apply only to current employees.
But subdivisions (b) through (e) of Penal Code section 832.8 make no such distinction between applicant information and current employee information. Although “[ejlection of employee benefits” in subdivision (c) applies to current employees, “[mjedical history” in subdivision (b) does not, because a peace officer’s medical history both as a job applicant and as a current employee is relevant to his current employment. In so narrowly construing the term “employment history,” as used in subdivision (a) of Penal Code section 832.8, the majority ignores the plain language of the statute to find ambiguity based on its structure.
I would instead look to the plain language of the statute and give the term “employment history” its commonly understood meaning: a listing of employers together with the starting and ending dates of employment for each employer. Under that definition the information sought by the Los Angeles Times is employment history and therefore confidential under section 832.8 of the Penal Code.
The Legislature has already decided that a peace officer’s employment history is confidential. Whether that is a good or bad policy choice is not a decision for this court to make. (Bonnell v. Medical Board (2003) 31 Cal.4th 1255, 1263 [8 Cal.Rptr.3d 532, 82 P.3d 740].)