County of Santa Clara v. California First Amendment Coalition, 170 Cal.

[1] The case dealt with a public records request by the California First Amendment Coalition for GIS "basemap" data held by Santa Clara County, California.

The trial court concluded that the county must release the records and could not place any restrictions on their use.

The county also unsuccessfully attempted to have the opinion depublished by the Supreme Court of California.

The county claimed the records were "protected critical infrastructure information" and exempted from release by the federal Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002, that disclosure was exempted under the CPRA under the "catch all" exemption, and that it had a federal copyright in the basemap, arguing that copyright protection authorized the county to condition release of records, under freedom of information laws like the CPRA, with restrictions on the requester’s use of the records or sharing of the records with others.