Alameda County court provides links — with redactions — to settlements

Justice Marsha Slough, Associate Justice of the California Fourth District Court of Appeal, led the workgroup tasked with amending the rules of court to clarify that any settlement agreements involving judicial officers are publicly disclosable. Photo credit: California Courts website

The Alameda County Superior Court in California agreed to pay an employee $175,000 in a 2017 settlement. In another instance, in 2016, the court settled for $26,600 to resolve a charge of harassment.

These and other public records are available at a page on the Alameda County Superior Court website. This is the product of a rule change in the California judiciary on May 24, when the California Judicial Council revised the rules of court “to clarify that any settlement agreements involving judicial officers for which public funds were spent in payment of the settlement must be disclosed if requested, including agreements related to complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination,” the state’s judicial website reported.

The Recorder at law.com reported on June 8, “Two weeks after California’s judiciary leaders ordered more transparency in disclosing taxpayer-funded settlements of judicial wrongdoing, most courts have offered the same response: We don’t have anything to report.”

Two appellate courts — the Second and the Sixth — and more than half of the trial courts told the publication that they had no responsive records to release.

“One court, however, took a different tack,” the Recorder reported. “Alameda County Superior Court unveiled a page on its website Friday that contains links to what court officials said are all ‘documents reflecting the resolution of claims or litigation — from Jan. 1, 2010, to the present, involving the court, its employees, and/or its judicial officers.’”

The Recorder acknowledged that the blacked-out portions of the documents often left questions. “The redactions and limited information in the documents makes it unclear if the court ever paid an employee to settle claims of sexual harassment or other misconduct by a judicial officer,” the publication reported.